Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to drive more web traffic is add web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing whenever you add web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are researching any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with an anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were going well in the gizmo-making assembly line when everything suddenly came to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, headed out immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the left side of the unit.
Immediately, everything sprang back to life.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice 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 being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site configured 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 instantly 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure everything will work as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage 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 things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites or online services.
External Services
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all of your content is published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your network, content pointing back to your site will get automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your site will benefit from exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these external sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account is set up, use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress using plugins and send data instantly to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, use your details with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. 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 Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can 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 sites and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your own web 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 server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated 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 intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services field
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view 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 feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services field when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling 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 web security.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic
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.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site complies with all legal requirements.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Tags & Categories
Post tags & categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is add new content on a consistent basis to automatically attract more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
Subscribe To Our Site And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!
***
"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
***