Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting web traffic is post web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing when you begin to publish content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for every opportunity they can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
Configuration 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 a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s an amusing little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was going according to schedule in the gizmo assembly line when all of a sudden, the machines ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and walked directly to the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap about one cm from the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, the machines returned to normal.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory 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 demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 site?)
While experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, 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 a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that everything will work as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many components such as your web server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites.
External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your system, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content will then be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use your information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add your account code to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up 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 accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online 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.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
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 website.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
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 of the important points.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services 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 – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress takes care of 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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping the list of update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress 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 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
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 WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely immune from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once 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 pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
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, some themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Tags And Categories
WordPress categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 Web Traffic!
When online users type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a dead link, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is publish great content on a regular basis to automatically start generating new web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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