Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to automatically attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start to get visitors whenever you add fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any opportunity you can to increase your own competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. With an expertly configured website, you have an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
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 builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with an amusing anecdote.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is going fine in the widget manufacturing plant when suddenly, things comes to a complete stop.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a gentle tap near the right side of the unit.
Immediately, the whole machinery returns to normal.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Unable to hide his anger and sense of outrage, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring site settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your 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 your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and/or online services.
External Accounts
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically get syndicated to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your traffic network, content linked back to your site gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to speed up the 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 Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account is with Google are set up, you can use the information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, traffic tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a plugin and and sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, you can use this information to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. 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 some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. 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 series.
Social Media
(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 media accounts before you can 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 various platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global 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 have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services section when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – 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 sites 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up 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 that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are 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 website is completely immune from being hacked.
(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.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl 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 Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good 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 make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Post tags and post categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can 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 – Another Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 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 admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post fresh content on a regular basis to start attracting web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take many web professionals a long time 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 covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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