Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add great content consistently to start driving web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically start to get new visitors when you begin to add web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about every opportunity you can to improve your performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured website, you have an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was going just fine in the gizmo plant when everything ground to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, walked immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a very gentle tap about one inch from the top-right side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and returned to normal.
The plant manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than five minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog set up so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 the solution to many problems can seem quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to achieve desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components such as your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like configuring spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
Integration With External Sites
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content gets published to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external platforms to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress 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 engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to other online applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data are set up, this information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained 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 plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, 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 automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and 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 WordPress site’s 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 set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
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 configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, 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 a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services field 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)
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – 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 in WordPress here: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Plugin Settings – Configuration
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.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely safe from a cyberattack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real 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 to their website with WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many 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 that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Additional Sections Of WordPress
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, 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 find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online, it’s important that your site stays compliant with all regulations.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Tags And Categories
WordPress categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be discussed 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 the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages 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.
Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is post web content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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