Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to generate more traffic is publish new content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to automatically bring web traffic when you post fresh content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are looking for any opportunity they can to improve their results 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”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website 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 process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with an anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was going fine in the widget plant when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what was wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed out directly to the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a little hammer from his tool box and made a single tap near the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything started working as before.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple in hindsight, 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 some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get certain results
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that things will function as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing a piece of software, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different components such as your server, your site, and various external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted 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 redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
Configuring External Sites
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content will get posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external services to your configuration, content linking back to your site is automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites and online solutions will need to be 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, use your details to automate web traffic 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, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, account code can be added to all pages in WordPress via a simple plugin and and sent to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both 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.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically 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, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(You can 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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries 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 website to read 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 in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what 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 website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
WP 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 layout and design aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Things To Consider
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Categories And Post Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap contains code that only search bots can interpret. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page
When online visitors enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error 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 System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing web traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes many web developers a long time to learn.
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 article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing strategies.
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