Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically generate more traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin adding fresh content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are researching every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was going just fine in the widget-making manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things came to a halt.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the control unit for 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a very gentle tap about one cm from the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant started working once again.
The manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working 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 spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring site settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing a plugin, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites and online solutions.
External Services
The concept behind adding external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your system, content linked back to your site will be automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Webmasters are set up, this information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and entered your site data, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress via plugins and and sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, this information can be used to 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 a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
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 RebelMouse page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your web 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 server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress 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 set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen 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 – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears 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 website to read the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify the update services list when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, 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 Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is guaranteed immunity from being attacked by hackers.
(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 attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and 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 Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, 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 themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Additional WordPress Sections
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about why it’s important to have a compliant website, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags and categories help search engines better classify and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web 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 things. Only search engine bots can interpret XML sitemaps. Although Google will 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 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is post new content consistently to generate web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have 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 Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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