Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website 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 traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add web content consistently to automatically start attracting traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing when you publish fresh content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into any advantage that can help you get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was humming along in the gizmo-making assembly line when suddenly, things stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived within the hour and, without saying a word, headed out immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the box for what seemed like 5 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny little hammer and made a single tap about 1 cm from the top-right edge of the box.
Immediately, everything started working once again.
The manager was overjoyed 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 $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived 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 new traffic to their sites.
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 get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site fully configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that things work to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your WP site, and various external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel 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 set up and configure various third-party sites.
External Sites
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your system, content linked back to your site is automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important data, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data are set up, you can use the details with web 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 performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, your account code can be added to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account is with Bing have been set up, the details can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners 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 some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get 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.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, 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 website …
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 website.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic 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 points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described 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 specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
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 …
(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 on this page 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 feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global 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 sites 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
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 dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you 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 likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings
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 the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Other Important Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover 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 let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to generate more traffic is post content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this process can take some website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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