Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting new web traffic is post web content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of this process. We explained 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 site 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 stage of the traffic system. You will learn what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured one. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is set up and configured, you will attract visitors automatically just by regularly posting fresh content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are exploring every opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is going fine in the gizmo-making plant when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, goes immediately to the control box. After staring at the box for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a gentle tap about 2 cm from the right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine comes back to life.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Feeling furious, the manager calls the expert. Why had he charged them 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, an invoice statement arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your WP site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simple flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas.
Configuring The Web Server
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). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites or online solutions.
External Accounts
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your setup, content pointing back to your website is automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be given added exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some third-party sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) 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 behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, you can add visitor tracking information to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is with Bing are set up, use this information to automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) 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 a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to 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 pages and attract new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different platforms you can add to your own traffic blueprint. 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 third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(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 or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
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
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, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up 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 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.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to notify the update services list when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(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 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely immune from a cyberattack.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Additional WordPress Areas
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog here:
Tags & Categories
Categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google will index your site just from 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.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish fresh content consistently to automatically start attracting traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge 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 as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically 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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