Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post new content regularly to start driving web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed 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 website, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to bring new visitors automatically as you begin posting web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive and businesses are looking for any advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For business owners, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this point here is a story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is humming along in the widget assembly line when production suddenly grinds to a complete stop.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads out immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for what seems like 2 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a single tap near the left corner of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line springs back to life.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Angrily, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking 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 website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that everything will work how you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web server, your WP site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these areas.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your web-hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, 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 your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 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, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content pointing back to your website will get automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your site will benefit from exposure online, helping your business tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic tracking code can be added to all of your web pages in WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and automatically sent to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account is with Bing are set up, your 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 provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option 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
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to configure these as part of 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 accounts and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology 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 that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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
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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 Settings
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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears 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 blog to get the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify various update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 sites 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial about setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind 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.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you 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 site which visitors can unlock by liking 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 layout and design aspects of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can understand an XML sitemap. Although Google can index your pages 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.
404 Error Page – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they will normally be presented with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to begin attracting more web traffic is publish content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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