Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to attract traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically get traffic when you begin publishing content consistently to your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are exploring any and every advantage available to improve their performance and results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a significant advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with 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 process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was running smoothly in the widget-making assembly line when the machines suddenly came to a halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the main control box. After staring at the schematics for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a very gentle tap about 3 cm from the right edge of the box.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The plant manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site set up so all you ever had 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 you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many problems often seems quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that things will function as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components such as your server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your hosting account that affect how your website 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 positive traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Sites
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your network, content linked back to your website is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your site to help 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, your information can be used to automate web traffic 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 performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin and automatically sent to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing, your account details can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can configure these as part of 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 get new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of 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
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 content 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 content further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping your update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is completely safe from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your site’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.
(Categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps provide readers with a visual map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search bots can understand. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from 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 can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add new content consistently to start attracting traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web professionals months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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