Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
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 web site, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained 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 with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to bring web traffic automatically just by adding new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are researching any advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here is an amusing anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going fine in the widget assembly plant when all of a sudden, the equipment comes to a complete stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and heads straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for what seems like about 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap about 1 inch from the top-right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, all the machinery springs back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Feeling furious, the factory manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress blog fully set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites 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?)
While many experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a solution, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web server, your WordPress site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simple flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and online solutions.
Integration With External Accounts
The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content will be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your setup, content pointing back to your site will get automatically fed to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will then receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and solutions will need to be 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, use your account information to integrate and automate web traffic-related 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 activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, traffic tracking information can be added to all web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing, your account information can be used to automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up 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 sites and bring new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 page.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – 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,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can 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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify various update services when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global 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 sites 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 your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easily indexable …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their own online communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify 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 likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress 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 the layout and design of your website, many themes also give you options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure For Better Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
For a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website, go here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
HTML Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can read. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to automatically drive more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published!
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***