Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to drive more web traffic is add great content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things 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 WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can drive traffic automatically as you start to publish new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about every advantage available to improve your performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were going just fine in the gizmo manufacturing plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the control box. After staring at the board for 3 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything started working once more.
The floor manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for having spent years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress web site set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems quite simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things will work to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your web site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During 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 you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Services
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your setup, content linking back to your site will be automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and website will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings 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 Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, your account information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, visitor tracking information can be added to WordPress using a simple plugin and automatically fed to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account is set up, you can use your information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up 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 loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web 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.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
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 of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have listed whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
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 sites linked to from your articles, 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugins For SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s 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 displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to 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 shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
Post Categories & Post Tags
Categories & tags help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a visual map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps contain code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they are greeted with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add content on a regular basis to start attracting traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some website professionals 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 article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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