Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to begin bringing new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 site, 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 article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to drive traffic automatically when you begin to publish new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are exploring every advantage available to improve their results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you an immediate competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a 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 a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
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 expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going well in the widget manufacturing plant when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads directly towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for about 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his pocket and makes a very gentle tap near the left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant springs back to life.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.
Angrily, the factory manager dials the expert. Why had he charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web properties would be automatically 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 website?)
While many experts often make complex situations and problems look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure everything will function exactly as you expect, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many different components such as your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings 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 traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning 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 services.
External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your network, content linking back to your site will be automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Search Console have been set up, use this information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple plugin and feed data automatically to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, your information can be used to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners 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.
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 show you how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. 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 (we cover some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
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.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content 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.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind 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
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is guaranteed immunity from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
Categories And Tags
Post tags & categories help search engines better classify and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap contains code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using 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 – Don’t Forget This!
When online users enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to bring more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process can take some website professionals months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively using a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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