Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article 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 to begin attracting more web traffic is add content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing just by consistently publishing fresh content to your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase 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 website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was going well in the gizmo-making workshop when things suddenly came to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap about one inch from the top-left side of the unit.
Immediately, every machine came back to life.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 challenges is often quite easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve certain results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will 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 so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites or online services.
External Sites
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your website gets automatically added to these platforms. Your business will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related 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, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, traffic monitoring code can be added to WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, your information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a hosted and a self-hosted option. 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 some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can 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 traffic to your site.
You should set up accounts with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level 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 that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your 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 users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – 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 …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 visitors 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 play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify your update services list when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website 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 websites 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 blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
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 design and layout aspects of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
To learn more about how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website, go here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that lists 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 online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post fresh content consistently to automatically begin bringing traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an tutorial series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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