Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article 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 site, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to automatically attract new traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically begin attracting new visitors when you begin to publish new content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring every advantage that can help you get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a significant advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a 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’s one way to explain the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was humming along in the widget manufacturing plant when everything suddenly ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the box for what seemed like 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the top-left side of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery sprang to life.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site 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 instantly 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 site?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for a client. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different parts including your web server, your WordPress site, and various external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically get syndicated to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site will be given additional exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site 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 before configuring your settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google, this information can be used to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to many other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, this information can be used with 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 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your 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 attract new traffic to your site.
Set up profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging 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 that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to 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 web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
Configuring WordPress
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 key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections 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 area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you 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 web 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 blog post digests, and could affect 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 main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly ping your update services list whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this tutorial: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with friends and members of their social networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to 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 likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also provide options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Features
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories And Post Tags
Post categories & post tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google will index your site 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.
Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When online visitors enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(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 on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to start driving traffic is post web content on a regular basis.
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 external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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