Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
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 site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to begin bringing new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to drive visitors automatically as you start to publish web content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are researching any opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
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 extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was moving along in the widget workshop when things suddenly came to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap about 1 cm from the right side of the box.
Immediately, the plant started working again.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working 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 be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be immediately 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?)
While experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to achieve certain results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure things will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your server, your web site, and a number of external sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options 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 web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at 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 checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites.
External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content pointing back to your website will get automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google have been set up, this information can be used with 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 efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, your account code can be added to WordPress via plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account has been set up, use the information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build 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 explain how to integrate this into your web traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 drive new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and RSS 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 allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
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 key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings 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 text area
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can 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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services box when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors 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 site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with all laws and regulations.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help search engines classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
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 applications find more of your website 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 will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is publish fresh content regularly to drive more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly 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 article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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