Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post fresh content consistently to drive traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to automatically start getting visitors when you start to post content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any advantage that can help you improve your own results and performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this point here is a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are running smoothly in the widget factory when everything suddenly grounds to a stop.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrives within 30 minutes and, without uttering a word, walks immediately to the main control box. After staring at the schematics for what seems like 3 minutes or less, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his tool box and makes a gentle tap about three inches from the top-right edge of the box.
Immediately, the machinery comes back to life.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Bewildered, the manager calls the expert. Why were they expected to pay such a ridiculously high fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other online properties would be immediately 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 things look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to get specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of various different components including your web server, your WP site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
Integration With External Accounts
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your web 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 syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your site will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, 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 these features into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and 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’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – 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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to ping the list of update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines 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 posts, 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling 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 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 website invisible to hackers and bots.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easier for search engines to index …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which 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 plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
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 the design and layout of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Additional Features To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
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 situations that can damage your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, refer to this article:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be set up during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is code that only search bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online users enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect 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 server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is post fresh content consistently to begin bringing more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many web professionals a long time to learn.
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 explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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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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