Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish great content consistently to drive more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured site different, and just what type of work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, you will drive traffic automatically simply by posting content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are looking for any advantage they can to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going well in the widget workshop when things suddenly stop working.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, walks immediately towards the control box. After staring at the board for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a very gentle tap about three inches from the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
Angry and bordering on a sense of outrage, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped working 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 every right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(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 solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to get desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things will function to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as simple as installing a plugin, tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
Third-Party Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content linking back to your site gets automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site 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 WordPress settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google have been set up, your details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can add traffic monitoring information to WordPress using a plugin and feed data instantly to other online applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, use this information 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 a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many 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 well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an 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 sites and platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
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.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section contains only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
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 and WordPress will do the rest …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify your update services list when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what 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.
(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 botnets.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO 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 pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, 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 value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your site easily with WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you select 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 shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your website, some themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(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.
This includes:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Categories & Tags
WordPress tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engine bots can read. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically generate traffic is add web content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
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 explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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