Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post new content regularly to bring more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin bringing visitors when you begin to add fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are exploring any advantage available to improve their performance and results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website 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 a built-in 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 type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things were working according to schedule in the widget-making workshop when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a gentle tap about one inch from the left-hand corner of the box.
Immediately, every machine inside the assembly line sprang to life again.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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 site?)
While many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that everything functions as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your webhosting account that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, get distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external platforms to your system, content linked back to your site gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site will be given added exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications 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 efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, tracking data can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account with Bing, use the information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts 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 social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology 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 site that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
***
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 text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services field whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are 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 matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can easily add social features to your site using WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Themes
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 design and layout elements of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress 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 selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding why it’s important to have a compliant website, see this article:
Post Categories & Post Tags
Categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your site’s 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 different things. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error 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 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically attract more web traffic is post web content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise required to perform this process can take some website professionals months 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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
Would You Like To Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***