Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add content consistently to generate more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website 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 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are researching every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are running smoothly in the widget assembly line when suddenly, all machines stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrives within 15 minutes and, without saying a word, heads immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for less than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny hammer and makes a gentle tap about 3 cm from the right-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything inside the plant returns to normal.
The plant manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services rendered totalling $5,000.
With great anger, the factory manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Why were they charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time delivering a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site fully configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured to make sure processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating 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 complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of a number of different parts such as your server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites and services.
External Sites
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content linked back to your website will be automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your website will benefit from exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some of these sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Search Console, you can use this information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and send data automatically to many other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 attract new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. 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 syndication tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different sites and platforms you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
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 key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, 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 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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services area whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
WP Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that improve traffic generation
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is completely immune from cyberattacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google to index …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site, see this article:
Post Categories & Tags
Post tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists 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 online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically bring more web traffic is post web content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this process typically takes many web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website and proven online marketing methods.
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