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 website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to start driving web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can attract web traffic automatically as you start to publish new content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any opportunity you can to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All 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 web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
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 kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything is moving along in the widget-making workshop when things grind to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and walks immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the box for what seems like about 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a single tap near the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line returns to normal.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Feeling furious, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website fully set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web 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 driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything functions as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your server, your WP site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like integrating spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and online services.
Integration With External Services
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content gets published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your setup, content with links pointing back to your website gets automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content receives exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help speed up the 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 WordPress settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site data have been set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins and feed data automatically to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media 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 sites and attract new visitors to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your 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 configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section contains only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post 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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up 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 website or blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping your update services list when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
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 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, website security is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(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 bots and hackers.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, 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 features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins let you select 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 likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post categories & tags help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps provide visitors with a an understandable map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can interpret. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When online visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish fresh content regularly to automatically begin bringing new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this process can take some web developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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