Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to drive more traffic is add great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin posting fresh content on a regular basis to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about any advantage that can help you improve your own performance and results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured website gives your business a significant advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going just fine in the widget-making factory when suddenly, things cease working.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, heads directly towards the main control box. After staring silently at the board for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line comes back to life.
The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Bewildered, the factory manager calls the expert. Why did he charge them so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content 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 website?)
While experts often make complex situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will run as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like configuring spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and online services.
External Sites
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be given exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to 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 before configuring your settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google are set up, you can use the details with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your account and entered your site data, account information can be added to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account has been set up, the information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, 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 traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to 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 pages and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various platforms that can be added to your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress 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 set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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 will do the rest …
(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
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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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds 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 blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, 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 ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping your update services list whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is safe from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and 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+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you choose 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 likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Important Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site, refer to this article:
WordPress Post Tags And Categories
Tags and post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help search engines better organize and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engines can interpret an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover 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 page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to bring more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take many website developers a long time 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 the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively using a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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