Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add web content on a regular basis to begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. The focus of this section is to help you understand what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured website. You will also understand how much work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, visitors will automatically start flowing simply by regularly posting content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting so much more competitive, it’s worth exploring every advantage that can help you improve your own results and performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
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 with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going just fine in the widget-making assembly line when all equipment suddenly ground to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the box for about 5 minutes or less, the expert then took out a little hammer from his tool box and made a gentle tap about one cm from the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than five minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online 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 driving traffic to your site?)
While experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up and activate to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that things will function as envisioned, etc.
(Driving web 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 challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas 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 fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites.
Configuring External Sites
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content gets published from one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your setup, content linked back to your website is automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site will receive exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some external web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account and entering site data, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add visitor tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress via a plugin and feed data instantly to other online applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data with Bing are set up, this information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
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 this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. 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 site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
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 of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you 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 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 influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, 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 most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to notify the list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your sites.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Aspects To Consider
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web 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 benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your online 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 different things. Only search engine bots can interpret XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found error page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post new content regularly to automatically start generating new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly 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 Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress website and proven web 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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