Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is add fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically get web traffic as you begin to add new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting ever more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional 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 does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything was running smoothly in the gizmo assembly line when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and immediately headed to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap about two cm from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything began to work again.
The manager was greatly overjoyed 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 an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt 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 be compensated fairly for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different parts such as your web hosting server, your WP site, and various external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web hosting account 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 website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically get syndicated to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your setup, content pointing back to your site will be automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and business will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account, use your account information to automate traffic 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 efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, traffic monitoring data can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and instantly sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to configure these as part of 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Set up profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you 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 field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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 on this page can have an 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 affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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.
The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify your update services list whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is completely immune from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by sharing 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, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also include options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website complies with government regulations.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories and post tags help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
HTML Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, 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 things. Although Google will index your pages just using 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 – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish content consistently to automatically begin bringing new web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals months to acquire.
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 covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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