Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to bring web traffic automatically just by adding fresh content consistently to your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over the competition. For businesses, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here is a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was humming along in the widget-making workshop when suddenly, everything ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and, without saying a word, immediately went to the main control box. After staring at the board for less than 2 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool belt and made a gentle tap near the right-hand side of the unit.
Immediately, everything sprang back to life.
The manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for less than five minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although experts often make complex things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure things work as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web server, your web site, and various third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some 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 process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your 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 site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content gets published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your setup, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details are set up, your account details can be used with 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 performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add visitor tracking information to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to various other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use your information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with 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 drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. 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 lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
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 account.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog 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 of the important points.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services area when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost 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 help to bring more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling 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 securing your website or blog.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also give you options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better 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 have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Categories And Tags
Categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engine bots can interpret XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When online visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is publish web content regularly to automatically attract new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process typically takes many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.
Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
***