Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish content consistently to begin bringing traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured website. You will also discover what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is fully set up and configured, new traffic will automatically start flowing when you add web content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about any and every opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
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 take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is humming along in the gizmo-making plant when suddenly, all machines stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads immediately towards the control box. After staring at the control unit for about 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer from his pocket and makes a gentle tap about 1 cm from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything returns to normal.
The plant manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager dials the expert. Why have they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that things will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web 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 time-consuming. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts such as your server, your website or blog, and various external sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites or online services.
3rd-Party Accounts Configuration
The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your network, content pointing back to your site will be automatically posted to these platforms. Your content and website benefits from additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – 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 useful information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site data are set up, the account details can be used with traffic 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 efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site details has been entered, traffic monitoring data can be integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and and sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, you can use this information with web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various 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 system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up 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 get new visitors to your site.
Set up profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications 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 strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically 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
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of 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 securing your web sites.
(WordPress 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.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins let you choose 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 social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle 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 do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with all government regulations.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap contains code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to bring web traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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