Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article 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 web site, all you have to do to attract more traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to begin to get new visitors automatically simply by consistently posting new content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was running smoothly in the gizmo-making workshop when things suddenly ceased working.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer from his tool belt and made a single tap near the bottom-left edge of the unit.
Immediately, the plant returned to normal.
The floor manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems is often ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure processes will run as planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simple flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and services.
Third-Party Sites Integration
The idea behind adding external sites is that all content will get published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your system, content linked back to your site will get automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your content and site benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help 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 WordPress site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(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 essential data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmasters, your account information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, account data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained 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 grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up 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 get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services 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 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 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 impact someone’s choice to explore your site 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify various update services when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: How To Set Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
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. No website is immune from being targeted.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find, crawl and index your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed 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 others online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom 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 users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections For More Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Categories And Post Tags
Post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engine bots can understand XML sitemaps. Although Google can 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.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically start generating more traffic is post 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 external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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