Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site 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 series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post great content on a consistent basis to generate more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to attract traffic automatically whenever you post fresh content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage available to improve your performance and results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
All was moving along in the widget factory when all of a sudden, all machines ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went directly to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 5 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about one inch from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine returned to normal.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time delivering a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure things function to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts including your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure various third-party sites and/or online solutions.
External Web Properties And Services – Configuration
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your system, content linked back to your website will get automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and business will be given added exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site data are set up, this information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add your account code to all of your pages in WordPress using a plugin and send data automatically to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful 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 this 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated 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 update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – 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 readers 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 text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – 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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
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 site is completely safe from cyberattacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Steps For WordPress Sites
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Tags & Categories
Tags & categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your website 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 not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly filled with code that only search bots can read. Although search engines like Google will 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they will normally be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add new content on a regular basis to start generating traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take many website developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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