Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to start driving traffic is post web content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built with 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 the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to attract new visitors automatically just by posting web content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over the competition. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was moving along in the widget workshop when things ground to a sudden halt.
No one could figure out what was wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert went directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy little hammer and made a single tap about one inch from the left side of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery inside the factory floor sprang to life.
The manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for having spent years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems can seem ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure things function exactly as you want, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different parts such as your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites or online services.
3rd-Party Web Properties
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content is published from a central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external sites into your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help speed up the configuration process 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’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – 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 important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google Search Console, your details can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, account data can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and automatically fed to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster 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, the details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(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 various 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 accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are various sites and platforms you can add to your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – 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 specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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 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 of displaying the full content 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 decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to notify your update services list when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
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 content, 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from a cyberattack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
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 real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure For Better Traffic Results
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for 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 engage in any form of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find 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 two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search bots can interpret. Although Google will index your site just from 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to begin attracting more web traffic is add new content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process can take many web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.
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