Welcome to Part Three of our Website 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 site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to automatically generate traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured site different. You will also understand what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is set up and fully configured, traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin posting new content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are researching any and every advantage they can to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
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 developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was going well in the widget plant when everything suddenly ceased working.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly afterwards and, without saying a word, immediately walked towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer from his shirt pocket and made a gentle tap near the left side of the box.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The floor manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice 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 consistently drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many problems may seem quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get desired results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure things will function to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your web site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings 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 site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and online services.
3rd-Party Web Properties
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content is published to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will receive increased exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site data have been set up, use this information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to many other useful 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, you can use your account information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up in order to 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 accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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
***
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 in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears 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 or 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 checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify various update services when new posts are 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 …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
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. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your sites.
(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.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web 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 bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Tags & Categories
WordPress categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide users with a logical map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can read. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is post content regularly to attract more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals a long time 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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe Using The Form Below!
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***