Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start driving web traffic is post content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and how much work is required to make sure that when everything is fully set up and configured, visitors will automatically start flowing simply by consistently adding content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth exploring every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For businesses, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the gizmo factory when everything suddenly just stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, immediately went towards the main control box. After staring at the box for about 2 minutes or less, the expert then took out a tiny little hammer and made a gentle tap about 1 inch from the left-hand side of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of 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 the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to get certain results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing a solution, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites and online services.
External Accounts
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your network, content pointing back to your website gets automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings 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 site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details have been set up, use your account information with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add visitor tracking information to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and send data instantly to many other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, your information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various solutions 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 strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, 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!)
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
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users 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 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site 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 simply cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(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 (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to 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 social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Categories and post tags help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web 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), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be greeted with a 404 page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is add web content consistently to automatically begin bringing new web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some website professionals a long time 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 addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing methods.
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