Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start generating new traffic is add content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn why an expertly configured site is different. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, you can automatically begin to get new visitors when you publish web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into every advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured website gives you an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going fine in the widget factory when all of a sudden, production stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny little hammer from his shirt pocket and made a gentle tap about two inches from the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, every machine inside the plant started working again.
The floor manager was delighted 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 manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for less than five minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite easy 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 involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve certain results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure processes will run the way you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many components including your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites or online solutions.
External Accounts
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your traffic network, content linking back to your site will get automatically fed to these platforms. Your business will then be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use this information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your web pages in WordPress using plugins and feed data instantly to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been with Bing are set up, you can use your details to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts 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 accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level 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 allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
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 users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions you can add to your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
Configuring WordPress
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 areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get 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 check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to 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)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is guaranteed immunity 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 blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing 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 your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections For Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle 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 make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site, go here:
Post Tags And Categories
Post categories and 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 pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online users enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is add web content on a consistent basis to start generating new web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take many website developers months 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 Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website and proven online marketing methods.
Get Notified When New Tutorials Are Published – Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
***