Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post content regularly to begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing 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 discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that new traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you post web content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start and a significant advantage online.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant 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’s a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process 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?
All is humming along in the widget-making plant when everything grinds to a sudden halt.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately goes to the control box. After staring silently at the board for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a little hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap about one cm from the left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything starts working as before.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services rendered for the sum of $5,000.
Furious, the manager rings the expert. Why did he charge them so much for less than five minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly 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?)
While experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get desired results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things function as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different components such as your server, your WP site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Web Properties & Solutions – Configuration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external sites into your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will receive increased exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some of the sites 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, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google are set up, you can use this information with 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 site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to various other online applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications 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 a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking 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 pages and attract new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
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 of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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
***
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 Settings
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 influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, 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 summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to notify various update services when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely immune from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
WordPress post categories & tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your website 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. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically drive web traffic is publish fresh content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"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
***