Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website 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 web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin bringing web traffic is post great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you post fresh content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage that can help you increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here is a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is humming along in the gizmo manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things grinds to a stop.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads out immediately to the control box. After staring at the circuit board for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer from his utility belt and makes a gentle tap near the right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant starts working as before.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
Feeling furious, the manager calls the expert. Why had he charged them so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for the client. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to make sure everything will work to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Accounts
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external sites to your traffic system, content linked back to your site will get automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmasters, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications 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 website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, account data can be integrated with WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and automatically sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing, you can use this information to automate 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 offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. 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 your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 page.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration 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.
Configuring WordPress
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent 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, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can 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 affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view 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 most important setting in this section 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 automatically notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services box when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their own friends and networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle 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 make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
If you need help understanding the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
WordPress Tags & Post Categories
Categories & post tags help search engines classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from 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 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in 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 System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to begin bringing traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some web professionals 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 the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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