Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
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 to begin attracting more web traffic is post fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. 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 has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to attract new traffic automatically just by posting new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are researching any and every advantage they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything is running smoothly in the gizmo-making assembly line when things suddenly stops.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks directly towards the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a gentle tap near the left-hand side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and returns to normal.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website 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 instantly 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 website?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything will function as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your site, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
Integration With External Solutions
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content pointing back to your site gets automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and business benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help speed up the process 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 settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account is set up, use this information to integrate and automate 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 website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and entered your site data, traffic monitoring code can be added to WordPress using a plugin and instantly sent to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is with Bing are set up, the details can be used to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, 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 for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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
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 influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global 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 sites 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Changing WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is safe from being targeted.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with members of their own online communities can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social features to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to select which social 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 shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted 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 engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Post tags & post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google can index your site just using 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.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically generate more web traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in 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 tutorial series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online 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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