Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to start generating more traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you add fresh content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are looking for every advantage they can that can help you improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is moving along in the widget factory when suddenly, all machines grinds to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walks towards the main control box. After staring at the box for 2 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool belt and makes a single tap about three inches from the top-left side of the unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
With a sense of outrage, the factory manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Why did he charge them so much for so little time delivering a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online 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 site?)
While the solution to many problems may seem quite simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will run as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web server, your site, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and online solutions.
External Services
The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external platforms into your system, content linked back to your site will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmasters, you can use your details with traffic-related 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 results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic tracking information can be integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and instantly 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 account with Bing Webmaster Tools, use the details with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
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 web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can 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 bring new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
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.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress 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 specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, 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 your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services field whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 blogs linked to from your content, 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
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. No blog is completely safe from a cyberattack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines find, classify and index your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which 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 followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Other Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Post categories & tags help search engines better classify and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
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 Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is post content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web 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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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