Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we 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 or blog, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing traffic is publish web content consistently!)
In Part Two, 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 everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to bring new traffic automatically when you add fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and are looking for any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate 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 website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was going just fine in the gizmo-making manufacturing plant when the machines suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and immediately headed to the control box. After staring at the electronic components for about 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a very gentle tap about two cm from the left-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and returned to normal.
The floor manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for spending years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(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 turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that everything functions as envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts such as your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your traffic system, content linked back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms. Your business will then be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – 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 important data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google Search Console, you can use this information to automate traffic-related 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 site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, account information can be added to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, use this information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring 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.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new traffic to your site.
You should set up profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
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 of the important areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up 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 website or blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, 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 checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to ping 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, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
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 website is immune from a cyberattack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, some themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic – Other Areas To Consider
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Categories And Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your website 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 thing. Although Google can index your pages just from 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
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically begin bringing web traffic is add new content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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