Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site 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 site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically generate more traffic is add great content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things 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 how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to get visitors automatically whenever you post web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, you have a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
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.
To illustrate this here is an amusing story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going fine in the gizmo plant when all of a sudden, everything ground to a stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and walked immediately to the control box. After staring at the control unit for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny hammer and made a gentle tap near the left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant sprang back to life.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for less than five minutes work. He promptly 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 being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that processes will run as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not just about installing a plugin, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts including your web server, your web site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business 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 good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, 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 services.
External Accounts
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external services to your network, content linked back to your site gets automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your content and website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Webmasters have been set up, use the details to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, account data can be easily integrated with WordPress using plugins and and sent to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, use the information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can 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 attract new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work 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 Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be added to your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration 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’s settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global 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 blogs 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your web sites is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
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 web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which social 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Things To Consider
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
WordPress post tags and post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover 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 server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is post fresh content on a consistent basis to begin attracting new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take many web professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading, click here:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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