Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish new content on a regular basis to automatically generate traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We will explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different from a professionally configured website, and how much work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and configured, you will attract visitors automatically as you begin to add fresh content regularly on your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any and every opportunity you can to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus 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 additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s an anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is running smoothly in the widget factory when things suddenly comes to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrives shortly afterward and heads out directly to the control box. After staring at the box for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a single tap near the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returns to normal.
The plant manager is delighted 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 an invoice for $5,000.
Angry and bordering on a sense of outrage, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other online properties would be immediately 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 site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems quite simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring settings for clients. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure things will work exactly as you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and various third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites and services.
External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your traffic system, content pointing back to your website will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be given additional exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the external sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help speed up the configuration 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 site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site data with Google Webmaster Tools have been set up, your account details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings 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 results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and send data instantly to various other applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data are set up, the account details can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
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 explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts before you can 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 accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to 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 social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings 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 …
(WordPress Update Services)
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
***
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 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 a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to notify the update services list whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global 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 blogs 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling 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, you simply cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
- Protect Your WordPress Web Sites From Botnets & Hackers With Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you specify which social 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 likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
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 layout and design of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Configuration Features For WordPress Sites
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Tags And Post Categories
Post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.
(Post categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for 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 from an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(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 on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add new content on a regular basis to automatically generate web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals a long time 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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
Want To Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe Using The Form Below!
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***