Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this 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 website or blog, all you have to do to begin bringing web traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of this process. You will understand why an expertly configured site is different. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to ensure that when all is set up and configured, you can attract traffic automatically simply by adding web content to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are exploring any opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Process 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 a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were moving along in the widget plant when the machinery suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the schematics for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy little hammer and made a single tap near the left corner of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line started working once more.
The plant manager was delighted 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 a bill for $5,000.
The manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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 site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring site settings for the client. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your web server, your site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content will be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external sites to your traffic system, content linked back to your website will get automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your business will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google have been set up, use your account information to automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, visitor tracking information can be added to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing are set up, your account information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different platforms you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you 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
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to ping various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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
Permalinks allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on setting up WP permalinks, go here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is immune from cyber-attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bots and hackers.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their friends and members of their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
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 the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Steps For WordPress Sites
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good 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 kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site, go here:
Post Tags And Categories
WordPress post tags and post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online visitors enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be presented with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is publish web content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals a long time to acquire.
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 explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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