Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to automatically attract new traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We will explain why an expertly configured site is different than a professionally configured site. You will also understand what type of work is required to ensure that when everything is fully set up and configured, visitors will automatically start flowing when you post new content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting ever more competitive worldwide, it’s worth looking into every advantage available to improve your own performance and results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with an amusing story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things are going well in the widget manufacturing plant when everything comes to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, walks directly towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer from his utility belt and makes a single tap near the left-hand side of the box.
Immediately, everything begins working once more.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services rendered totalling $5,000.
Bewildered, the factory manager dials the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for less than five minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice 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 visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to get specific results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure everything will function as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many different components including your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your hosting 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, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites or online services.
Integration With External Solutions
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external services to your setup, content linking back to your site gets automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, use this information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add tracking information to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to other online applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing have been set up, use this information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different solutions you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
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 key areas.
Global Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
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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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at 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 dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely immune from being attacked.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here for more info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great 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 available for WordPress users.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which 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 followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags & Post Categories
WordPress post categories & tags help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web 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 Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is post web content regularly to start generating web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have 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 article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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