Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described 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 blog, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing just by consistently posting content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about any opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has 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 installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was working according to schedule in the gizmo-making assembly line when all of a sudden, everything came to a halt.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and headed out directly to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for about 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a tiny hammer from his tool box and made a gentle tap about two inches from the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and returned once again to normal.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other online properties would be automatically 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 experts often make complex things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up and activated to get desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works the way you expect, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different parts such as your web server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(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 flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, 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 site 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 good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure various external sites and online solutions.
External Sites & Accounts – Configuration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content is posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external platforms into your setup, content linked back to your website gets automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your business receives increased exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some of the third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help speed up the 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account is set up, the information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data instantly to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use this information with traffic settings 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 business presence online.
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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up 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 pages and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different solutions you can add to your web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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
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 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 blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed whenever new posts get 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 unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely immune from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easier for search engines like Google to index …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish 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)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – 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, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With a number of quality 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 enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
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 unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
Post Categories And Tags
WordPress post categories & tags help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.
(Categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A 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 website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engines can understand an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to start generating new web traffic is add new content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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