Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing just by adding web content regularly on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching every advantage they can that can help you improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a 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 its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was going well in the gizmo manufacturing plant when things ground to a sudden halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived within in less than 30 minutes and, without uttering a word, went immediately to the control box. After staring at the schematics for 2 minutes or less, the expert then took out a tiny hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap near the left-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line returned to normal.
The floor manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure everything works as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your server, your website or blog, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website 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 like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server 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 business may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, 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 Accounts
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your traffic system, content pointing back to your site is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content will then be given additional exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Search Console are set up, this information can be used with web 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 traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, account code can be added to WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details have been set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with 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 web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to 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 visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social 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 with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be added to your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(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 site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of 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 Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping the list of update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you 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 shares), etc. Some social sharing 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 traffic.
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 search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of 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)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When online visitors type in the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error 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 redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to bring traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers months to learn.
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 addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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