Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to drive more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to start bringing traffic automatically when you start posting web content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are exploring every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is going well in the gizmo assembly line when suddenly, all machines stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks directly towards the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap near the top-right corner of the box.
Immediately, the plant comes back to life.
The manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Feeling furious, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for having spent years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website set up 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 automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be 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.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to get desired results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything will work exactly as you have planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web hosting 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 try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, 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 and services.
External Sites
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external services to your configuration, content pointing back to your website is automatically syndicated to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will be given additional exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some external web properties and online services will need to be set up before configuring your settings 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, use the details to integrate and automate traffic-related settings 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 traffic performance, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic tracking information to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. 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 some great 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 these features into your automated 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 bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up in order to 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 accounts set up with all the leading 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 select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 own RebelMouse website.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a 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 WordPress settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
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 chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view the rest of the content from a partial feed, 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 here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your site is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any type of business online, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post tags and categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
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 applications discover your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google can 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are presented with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to begin bringing new web traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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