Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to start generating web traffic is post fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration stage of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to start getting new traffic automatically when you post new content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are looking for any advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start from the moment your website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website 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 process!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was going just fine in the widget workshop when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, walked directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then produced a tiny hammer and made a very gentle tap near the bottom-left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The manager was delighted 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 amount of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice 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 driving new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 site?)
Although experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to achieve certain results
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that things function how you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking a button, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites or online services.
Integration With External Web Properties
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account is set up, use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, account information can be integrated with WordPress using a plugin and automatically fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing have been set up, use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up in order to integrate these with 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 attract new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can 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
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, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services when 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 unticked …
(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 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type 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 Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of 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 simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your site.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WP Theme Features
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 layout and design of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a few buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure For Improved Traffic
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your online 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 not the same things. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. Although Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add new content regularly to begin attracting more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many web 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 article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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