Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web 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 article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically bring more traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything 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 article, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin driving new visitors when you post web content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways 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 competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are exploring every advantage they believe will help them increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Process 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
All is going fine in the gizmo assembly workshop when everything grinds to a sudden halt.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads directly towards the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his pocket and makes a single tap near the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, all machinery in the factory floor springs to life once more.
The plant manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
With a sense of outrage, the factory manager calls the expert. Why were they expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, 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 gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks 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 driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that processes will work as planned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking a button, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your website, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your traffic network, content linked back to your website will be automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these external web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to help save time 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 site:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Webmasters have been set up, you can use this information to automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, 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, account information can be integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing are set up, you can use this information 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 build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking 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.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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
***
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 visitors will see your content 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 summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to notify the list of update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Security Plugins – 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 cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website with WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
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, some themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Additional 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 site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
Tags & categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can understand XML sitemaps. Although Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When online users enter the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is publish web content consistently to automatically attract new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers months to acquire.
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 section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
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 or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***