Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically attract more web traffic is post fresh content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to automatically begin to get web traffic whenever you add content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are exploring every advantage available to improve their performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going just fine in the gizmo manufacturing plant when the equipment suddenly ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walked towards the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy little hammer and made a single tap near the left-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, everything started working once more.
The manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get desired results
- Which options you need to configure to make sure processes will work as planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure various external sites and/or online solutions.
External Accounts
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website gets automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to help 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google, you can use this information to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, your account information can be easily integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and automatically sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, you can use your account information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional web 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 series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can configure these as part of 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 get new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, 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)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy 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 site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
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 of the important points.
WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described below 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 prevent search engines from indexing your site, 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)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
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 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 blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to ping your update services list when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your website is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which 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 plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other Features Of WordPress For Increased Traffic Results
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic 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 as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post tags and categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways 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.
HTML Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites 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 not the same things. Only search engines can interpret an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on links pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is add new content on a consistent basis to drive traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration process typically takes some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing methods.
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