Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One 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 to automatically start generating web traffic is post great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been 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 phase of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically drive new visitors when you start posting web content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are exploring every opportunity they can to improve their performance and results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes 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 an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were humming along in the gizmo-making factory when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has gone wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived within the hour and, without uttering a word, walked immediately to the control box. After staring at the box for what seemed like 2 minutes or less, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer and made a gentle tap about one inch from the right-hand side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and sprang to life once again.
The floor manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While experts often make complicated things look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure everything works as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Accounts
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress 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 Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmasters, use the account information to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, visitor tracking information can be added to all of your pages in WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data are set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to 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 displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
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 notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get the rest of the content from summaries, 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 check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping 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, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your sites.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easier for search engines like Google to index …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find 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 share your content with friends and members of their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins allow you to 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 followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
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 give you options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article on why it’s important to have a legally compliant website here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
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 applications find more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. 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.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error 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 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically drive more web traffic is post content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers a long time 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 addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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