Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to drive more traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand 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 with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different, and what type of work is required to ensure that when everything is fully configured, you can get web traffic automatically simply by consistently posting new content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are exploring every advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured website gives your business a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things are humming along in the gizmo factory when suddenly, everything ceases working.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks directly towards the main control box. After staring silently at the board for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer from his pocket and makes a single tap about three inches from the left side of the box.
Immediately, the machinery springs back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
With great anger, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 driving traffic to your site?)
While many experts often make complicated things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that things will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing a solution, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components including your server, your site, and various third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web 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 unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites and services.
3rd-Party Accounts Configuration
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content should be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will automatically get syndicated to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content linking back to your site will be automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your business will then be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google Webmasters have been set up, use your information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your web pages in WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Set up profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
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.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
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
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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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page 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 blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to ping all the update services you have listed whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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 content, 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WP Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type 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
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of 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 web security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to index, it allows you to configure 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 share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site using free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
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 aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Sections Of WordPress To Configure
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with government legal requirements.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post categories & post tags help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post 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 for users, it can also help external tools find your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps provide visitors with a visual map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although Google will index your site just from 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 results in increased traffic.
Your 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 error page) …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to 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 then need to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically generate more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some web developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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