Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is add new content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things 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 a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin to post content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are looking for every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a 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 can offer.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo-making factory when suddenly, everything comes to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and immediately walks to the control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny hammer and makes a gentle tap near the left side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and begins working again.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services rendered totalling $5,000.
Unable to contain his anger and sense of outrage, the manager calls the expert. Why did he charge them such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress blog set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many problems can seem quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure things will function as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and various external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will be published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your network, content pointing back to your site will be automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will then receive increased exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details have been set up, use this information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple plugin and send data automatically to many other online applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use this information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can 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 sites and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various solutions you can add to your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – 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 specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors 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 summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to ping the list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(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 blogs 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 Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is immune from cyberattacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which 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 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 you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components 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 traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your site complies with all government legal requirements.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your site here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post tags & categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web 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. Although Google will index your site just using 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post web content consistently to automatically start attracting traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers a long time 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 addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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