Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
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 site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is post great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built using 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 this process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to bring web traffic automatically simply by posting web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability 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 every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
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 difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this point with an amusing anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going well in the gizmo plant when everything suddenly ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went towards the main control box. After staring at the schematics for what seemed like 2 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy little hammer and made a gentle tap near the left-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The floor manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although many experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure everything will work as planned, etc.
(Generating new 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. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a plugin, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and various third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business can 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 bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Accounts
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your traffic system, content linking back to your site will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will then be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account has been set up, your details can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your pages in WordPress using a plugin and send data automatically to other applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, the information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan 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 explain how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(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 accounts before you can 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
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 displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. 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 accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
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 …
(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
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 web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to ping the list of update services whenever a new post gets 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 the settings in this section 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of web security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your website easily using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social 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 shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also give you options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Important Sections To Configure
Last but not least in the 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 bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags and post categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories 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, it can also help external sites discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect 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 error page can be set up on your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add new content regularly to attract traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many web developers months to learn.
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 our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy 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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