Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin attracting more web traffic is post great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by regularly posting fresh content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth looking into any opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was humming along in the gizmo-making plant when things suddenly came to a stop.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a very gentle tap about two and half cm from the right-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, everything began to work once more.
The floor manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make complex things look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to achieve certain results
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that everything will function to plan, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Services
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content should be published to one central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your setup, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some of these external sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google are set up, you can use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, traffic monitoring information can be easily integrated with WordPress using plugins and automatically sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use your information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can 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 social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress 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 or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is immune from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google find, crawl and index your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social 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.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Steps For WordPress Sites
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome 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, it’s important that your site is compliant with all legal requirements.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
To learn more about the importance of having a legally compliant website, go here:
Tags & Categories
Post tags & categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 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 dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to begin bringing web traffic is add fresh content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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