Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 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, all you have to do to drive more web traffic is publish content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically begin attracting traffic simply by posting web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are researching any and every advantage they believe will improve their performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
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 take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was running smoothly in the gizmo workshop when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked directly to the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for about 5 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny little hammer and made a single tap about 2 inches from the bottom-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, every machine came back to life.
The floor manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 site?)
Although experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure things will function exactly as you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different parts such as your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simple flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Sites And Accounts – Configuration
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external sites to your configuration, content pointing back to your website gets automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will then be given additional exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help speed up the configuration process 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’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account is set up, you can use your details to automate web 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, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data instantly to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been set up, your details can be used to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up in order to 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 profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act 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 site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
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 RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions you can add to your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains 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 traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 Settings
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 a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Changing WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with 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, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their own friends and networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with 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, you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Process.
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 and results.
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 online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When online visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish great content consistently to automatically attract web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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