Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to start generating traffic is post web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can bring new visitors automatically whenever you publish fresh content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors 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 exploring every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is moving along in the widget-making manufacturing plant when things grind to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks immediately towards the control box. After staring at the board for what seems like 2 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his tool box and makes a gentle tap about two inches from the left-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returns to normal.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
Furious, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog 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 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring site settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which options need to be configured to make sure everything functions as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components such as your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and services.
External Accounts
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content is published to one central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your traffic network, content pointing back to your site will get automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media accounts, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, your account information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, account data can be integrated with WordPress via a plugin and and sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account is with Bing have been set up, use the details with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 this into your web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your 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 social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse 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 this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described 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 purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services field when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this tutorial: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is safe from a cyberattack.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social share plugins allow you to specify which social 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 plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WP Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Additional Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be configured 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 for how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress site here:
Categories & Post Tags
WordPress post tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google will 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 results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they will normally be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically attract web traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take many website developers a long time 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing methods.
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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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