Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically start driving traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that new visitors will automatically start flowing just by consistently posting new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for any opportunity they can to improve their performance and results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here is a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were moving along in the widget-making plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately headed to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer and made a gentle tap near the right side of the unit.
Immediately, every machine in the assembly plant sprang back to life.
The plant manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left 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 such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory 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 be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems may seem quite easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to make sure processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web server, your web site, and various third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
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). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your 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 web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your configuration, content linking back to your site will get automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to help speed up the configuration 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 site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use your details to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, account data can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and and sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account has been with Bing have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and 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 users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great 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 system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts before you can integrate these with 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 visitors to your site.
Set up accounts with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 own RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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
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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 influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect 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 excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping the list of update services whenever a new post is 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 Section)
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 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
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial about setting up permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your 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 web site is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines find, crawl and index your web pages …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. Once 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 displayed in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their own friends and networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose 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 likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also provide options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your site’s 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 Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to begin bringing web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
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