Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post great content on a regular basis to start generating traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you why an expertly configured site is different. You will also discover just what type of work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, you will drive traffic automatically simply by adding web content on a regular basis to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are researching any and every advantage available to improve their performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were moving along in the gizmo assembly workshop when everything suddenly ceased working.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the control box. After staring at the box for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a gentle tap near the right side of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery in the factory floor came back to life.
The manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived 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 new traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges can seem quite simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to get specific results
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that processes will work as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of various different parts such as your web hosting server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and services.
External Services
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content gets published to a central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your configuration, content linked back to your website gets automatically posted to these platforms. Your website will receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online services will need to be set up before configuring your settings to 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 Webmasters)
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 essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, your information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add your account information to all of your web pages in WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to various other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use the details with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should set up profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, 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 system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
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 points.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
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 …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
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, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, 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 a partial feed, 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have listed whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely immune from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you specify which social 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 social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both 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 do business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website here:
Post Categories And Post Tags
Categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
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 WordPress 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 discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a visual map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search engines can interpret. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – 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 type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically attract web traffic is publish fresh content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some website professionals 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 article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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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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