Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by publishing content regularly to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any and every opportunity you can to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going fine in the gizmo manufacturing plant when things suddenly grinds to a stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, immediately walks to the main control box. After staring at the electronic components for 5 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a gentle tap about 1 inch from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery springs back to life.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a crisis?
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 sites and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges can seem ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring some of the site settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that everything will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different parts including your server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, 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 web traffic your business can attract will be unwanted 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 bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites or online services.
Configuring External Services
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your configuration, content linking back to your website will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will benefit from exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some third-party sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, use this information with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to other applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account has been with Bing are set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up 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 accounts and pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be added to your web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated 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 have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to notify various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugin Settings – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, 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 WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely immune from a cyber attack.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Areas For WordPress Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website 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 things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
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 Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps provide visitors with a visual map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using 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.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to attract new traffic is publish content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some 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 explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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