Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to attract more traffic is publish content consistently!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to bring web traffic automatically whenever you post new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are looking for every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant 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’s one way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything is humming along in the gizmo-making assembly line when all of a sudden, things comes to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives within 20 minutes and, without saying a word, heads out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the board for what seems like 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a gentle tap about 1 inch from the left edge of the box.
Immediately, every machine in the plant starts working as before.
The manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Unable to contain his anger and bewilderment, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring site settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to get specific results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure processes will run as envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of a number of different components such as your web server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and online services.
External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content gets published from 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.
Once these external sites have been added to your setup, content linked back to your website will be automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media accounts, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will be given additional exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to save time 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 before configuring your site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, use this information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress using plugins and send data automatically to other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, you can use this information 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 website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of 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 article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up 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 pages and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress 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 WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact 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 a partial feed, 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.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services field when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind 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.
(Security Plugins stop 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.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their social communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many 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 post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also include options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Aspects For Your WordPress Site
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
To learn more about the importance of having a compliant website, see this article:
Tags & Post Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help search engines classify and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a logical map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your pages 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 enter the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically begin attracting more web traffic is post web content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business with a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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