Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to start driving web traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start getting web traffic simply by regularly posting web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are looking for any and every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
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 developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo-making workshop when suddenly, things grinds to a stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrives soon afterwards and, without saying a word, walks immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a gentle tap near the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything starts working again.
The manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Outraged and bewildered, the factory manager calls the expert. Why were they charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things work to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts such as your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(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 like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your 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 you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
Third-Party Sites Integration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your configuration, content linking back to your site will be automatically added to these platforms. Your content will then be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the external sites and solutions 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account, your account details can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress using a plugin and feed data instantly to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, use this information with 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 hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, 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 these features into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up in order to integrate these with 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 attract new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
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 page.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described in 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 – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(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
***
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 have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify your update services list when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring Settings – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type 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
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 completely immune from cyber attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(WordPress 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 significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with friends and members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you 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 ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online, it’s important that your website complies with all government regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your site just from 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.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address or click on links pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to attract more traffic is add new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***