Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting new traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation 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 site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you why an expertly configured site is different from a professionally configured website, and what kind of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is fully configured, you can automatically start attracting visitors when you begin posting fresh content to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any and every advantage they can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required 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.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going well in the widget plant when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately to the main control box. After staring at the box for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a very gentle tap about one cm from the left-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the plant springs back to life.
The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
With great anger, the factory manager dials the expert. Why were they charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working 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, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your 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 automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that things work as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of a number of different components including your web server, your site, and various third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas.
Your 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 configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for bad and good traffic and 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 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content pointing back to your website will be automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings to save time 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google have been set up, your details can be used with traffic settings and notifications 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 results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your pages in WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data automatically to other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use this information with web 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 2, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with 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 And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can integrate these with 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described 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, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
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, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google find and index your web pages …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily with WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to choose which 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 social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags & post categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is code that only search bots can understand. Although search engines like 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.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When online visitors type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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