Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One 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 is post new content regularly to automatically start generating web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We explained 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to begin to get visitors automatically just by posting web content on a consistent basis to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are researching any advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and 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 process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were humming along in the gizmo assembly plant when all of a sudden, everything came to a stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and immediately headed towards the control box. After staring at the schematics for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer from his pocket and made a gentle tap near the right-hand side of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery came back to life.
The plant manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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?)
Although experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring site settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure things work how you would like, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different components including your server, your site, and various third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Sites
The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your setup, content linking back to your website gets automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will be given added exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and services 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress using a plugin and send data instantly to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, your details can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various 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 traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts in order to 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 accounts and get new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 social feed.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic system. 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 web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
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.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
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 – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services 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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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 here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify the list of update services when 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 unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of 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, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bots and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you select which social 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 plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
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 design and layout of your site, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories & tags help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and post categories 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 set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google will index your pages just using 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 Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically start attracting traffic is publish great content on a consistent 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 components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this 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 addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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