Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to start 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 WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We will explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also learn how much work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is set up and configured, traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin publishing fresh content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured website gives you a significant advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is an amusing anecdote.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was humming along in the widget-making manufacturing plant when the machines suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly afterward and, without uttering a word, walked directly to the main control box. After staring at the board for 3 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the left-hand edge of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery returned to normal.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 website?)
Although the solution to many problems is often quite simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve desired results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything will function to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a solution, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of a number of different components including your web server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once 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 online services.
External Services
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your traffic system, content linked back to your website gets automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, your information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to many other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data have been set up, use the information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get 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.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
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 various platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and 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 site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
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.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated 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, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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
***
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 on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify various update services 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
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 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 Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is immune from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure
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 Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website 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 as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags & categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
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 for users, it can also help external tools find 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. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins 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.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish new content on a consistent basis to begin attracting more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this process typically takes many web professionals months to learn.
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 explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published!
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***