Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to attract new web traffic is add fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically drive visitors when you post fresh content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are looking for every opportunity they can to improve their performance and results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was going well in the gizmo assembly line when all of a sudden, everything came to a stop.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, immediately headed towards the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 3 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a single tap near the right-hand edge of the unit.
Immediately, all the machinery started working once again.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed 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 drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that everything works how you have envisioned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts such as your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and 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 simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned 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 bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites or online services.
External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content will get published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic system, content linked back to your site will get automatically posted to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help speed up the process 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 Webmaster Tools
(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 a range of useful information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account has been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, visitor tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, you can use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
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 explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 sites and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free 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 – Distribute your content to social networks)
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 many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your site settings to discourage 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 area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
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 and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify your list of update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including 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 blog is immune from cyberattacks.
(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 botnets and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easily indexable …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up 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 their networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to choose 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 followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories And Tags
Categories and post tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will normally be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is add great content consistently to automatically begin bringing more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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