Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this 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 website, all you have to do to automatically drive more web traffic is add web content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can attract new traffic automatically whenever you add new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are looking for any and every advantage they can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. An expertly configured website gives your business a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything is going just fine in the widget-making workshop when suddenly, the machines stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the bottom-right side of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line comes back to life.
The manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Confused and bewildered, the factory manager rings the expert. Why were they charged so much for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive 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 had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems can seem ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart 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 examine these areas.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here 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 and options in your webhosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like configuring server-level spam protection and security 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 email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
Configuring External Services
The idea behind adding external sites is that all content is published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your setup, content linking back to your website will be automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be given added exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account is set up, use this information to integrate and automate 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 site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data have been set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts before you can integrate these with 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 get new traffic to your site.
You should set up profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be added to your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 and WordPress takes care of 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 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, choosing 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 play a part in 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 a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with 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, web security is something you cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Other Areas To Consider
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
WordPress post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can read. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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.
404 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they will normally be presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post web content consistently to automatically bring more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this process typically takes some web developers 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 article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
- Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – Learn How To Create A Web Traffic-Getting Machine With WordPress
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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