Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to begin bringing new traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. 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 how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will explain what makes an expertly configured site different from a professionally configured one, and what type of work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and fully configured, you will drive traffic automatically as you start to add content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into any and every opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were running smoothly in the widget-making factory when suddenly, everything stopped working.
No one could figure out what is wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, immediately headed towards the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy little hammer and made a gentle tap about two cm from the right-hand edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything in the assembly plant began working once more.
The floor manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request for payment of services rendered totalling $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for less than 5 minutes 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your blog fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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 many experts often make difficult solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get specific results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything works as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and online services.
External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your website will receive increased exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some of these third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use this information with web traffic-related settings 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 efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account, use this information to automate web traffic settings 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 the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts in order to configure these as part of 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 accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 website.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be added to your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services)
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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
WordPress 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 kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your websites.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site 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. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
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 design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Other Important Aspects To Consider
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags And Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to begin bringing more web traffic is post fresh content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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