Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine 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 generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically drive traffic is add fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically start to get web traffic simply by publishing web content consistently on your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are exploring any and every advantage they can to improve their performance online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start and a significant competitive advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was moving along in the widget factory when the equipment suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for what seemed like 2 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny little hammer and made a gentle tap about 2 cm from the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned once again to normal.
The manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of services rendered for $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than five minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although many experts often make complicated situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will run as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web hosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting 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 various external sites and services.
External Accounts
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your configuration, content linked back to your site is automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party web properties and online services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s 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 Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
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 essential information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site data are set up, your account details can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress using a plugin and send data instantly to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, the information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
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 explain how to integrate this into your traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts 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 visitors to your site.
Set up accounts with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web 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 site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 your content gets seen by visitors 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 readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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 most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify various update services 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 unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling 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, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web site.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site using WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings
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 the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons 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 turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Additional Areas Of WordPress
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
To learn more about how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog, refer to this article:
Tags & Post Categories
Post tags & post categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your website 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. Only search engines can interpret XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your site just using 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 Forget This!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 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 let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to bring traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have 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 WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress 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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