Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically drive web traffic is add web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of this process. 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 website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to drive new visitors automatically when you publish fresh content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about any opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, you have an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything is moving along in the widget factory when all of a sudden, things grinds to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for 3 minutes or less, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap about three inches from the top-left corner of the box.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
With great anger, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped functioning and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 site?)
Although many experts often make difficult things look easy, 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 a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get certain results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure processes will run how you want, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling all 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 positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Third-Party Accounts Configuration
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your setup, content linking back to your site will get automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to save time 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 inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account has been set up, the details can be used to automate web traffic-related 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 campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add visitor tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to various other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts 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 sites and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, 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 well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free 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 social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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
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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
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 have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get the rest of the content from summaries, 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 enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services field whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your articles, 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
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 WP permalinks here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that improve traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your 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 specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with members of their online communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users 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 can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both 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 make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
For a detailed article on the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress tags and categories help search engines 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 strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can interpret XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to bring traffic is post great content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have 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 our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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