Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we 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 automatically start generating traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of this process. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and just what kind of work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is fully configured, you can automatically begin to get web traffic when you start to post web content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about every advantage that can help you get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional labor required 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 an amusing story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was humming along in the gizmo workshop when all of a sudden, things ground to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walked to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 2 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer from his pocket and made a single tap near the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything began working again.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived 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 consistently to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It 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 accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will function to plan, etc.
(Driving web 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. It’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple flowchart showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your traffic network, content linked back to your site will get automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your business will be given exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google Search Console are set up, use this information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, tracking data can be integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin and automatically fed to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details, use the information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build 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 explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, 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 is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
***
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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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 posts, 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of 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 cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your website.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you specify which social 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 ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website here:
Post Tags & Categories
WordPress tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search bots can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from 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 type in the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they are greeted with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add new content regularly to automatically generate web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers months to acquire.
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 WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
***