Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to generate web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different from a professionally configured site. You will also learn just what type of work is required to make sure that when everything is fully configured, you can automatically start attracting web traffic as you begin publishing fresh content on a regular basis to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are looking for every advantage they can to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was going just fine in the gizmo assembly plant when the machinery suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately headed towards the control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny little hammer from his pocket and made a single tap near the top-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, every machine came back to life.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site fully set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many problems is often ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything functions to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many different components including your server, your WP site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, get distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external platforms to your configuration, content linking back to your site will be automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business benefits from added exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google, use the details to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to many other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account is set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Features For WordPress Traffic Automation
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online, you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Tags And Post Categories
Tags & categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When online users type in the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to begin driving web traffic is add web content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process typically takes some website developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing strategies.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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