Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to drive web traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of this process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to get new visitors automatically when you begin to post content on a regular basis to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
There is a 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process 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 humming along in the widget assembly line when things come to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walks to the control box. After staring silently at the box for less than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a gentle tap near the right side of the box.
Immediately, the machinery returns once more to normal.
The manager is greatly overjoyed 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 for the sum of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the factory manager picks up the phone and rings 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 then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be automatically 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 many experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that things work as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all 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 examine these areas in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
External Web Properties & Accounts – Configuration
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your traffic network, content linking back to your website gets automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website benefits from increased exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online solutions 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, use your details to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site details has been entered, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to various other applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are various platforms you can add to your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to 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’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
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 specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can 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 shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows 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, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
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 examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is safe from being hacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to 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 more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages 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, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, some themes also provide options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site 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 seriously affect your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing 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 for your website enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional web 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 server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to start generating new traffic is publish web content on a consistent basis.
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 typically takes some website professionals months to acquire.
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 section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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