Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
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 to generate more traffic is add fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence 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 where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing as you start to post web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage available to improve your performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to 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 website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things are moving along in the gizmo-making assembly line when everything suddenly grounds to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, walks directly towards the control box. After staring at the electronic components for 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a single tap near the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The plant manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services for the sum of $5,000.
Angry and bordering on a sense of outrage, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges can seem ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires 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 and activated to get desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your server, your WP site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content should be published to one central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your system, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to speed up the configuration 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’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account is with Google are set up, the account details can be used to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and entered your site details, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress via plugins and feed data instantly to various other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details are set up, you can use your details to automate web traffic 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 platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social 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 social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary 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 that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated 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 chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugin Settings – Configuration
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is safe from cyber-attacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website 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 things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories & tags help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map
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 applications discover your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your site just from 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.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Page
When online visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are greeted with a 404 page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically drive web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly 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 WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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