Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to begin attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can attract web traffic automatically simply by regularly publishing new content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming ever more competitive, it’s worth looking into every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very beginning.
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 an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more work 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 an anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the gizmo assembly workshop when everything ground to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the board for about 3 minutes, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a very gentle tap about 3 cm from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine returned to normal.
The plant manager was overjoyed 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 $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them 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, a bill of payment arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress blog configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure processes will work as planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your site, and various third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings in your web server 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 traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires 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 preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external platforms to your traffic network, content linking back to your site will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration 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 Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site data, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add tracking code to WordPress using a simple plugin and feed data instantly to many 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 Webmasters. After setting up your account, use this information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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
***
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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services box whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
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 permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website 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, website security is something you cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WP Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, some themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Post Tags
Post tags and post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your website 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 two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to bring more web traffic is publish great content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***