Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content on a regular basis to generate more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to attract new traffic automatically simply by consistently publishing new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able 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 ever more competitive and are looking for every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured website gives you a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
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 a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
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 kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s a story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything was moving along in the widget-making manufacturing plant when suddenly, things ground to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and walked directly to the control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy little hammer from his tool belt and made a single tap near the left edge of the unit.
Immediately, the plant returned to normal.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure processes will work as planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different parts such as your web server, your WP site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and services.
3rd-Party Accounts
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external services to your traffic network, content pointing back to your website is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your site will then receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, use your details with traffic 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 activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add traffic tracking information to WordPress via a plugin and send data automatically to many other online applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, the information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts 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 sites and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be added to your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
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.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, 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
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling 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, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your website.
(WordPress 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 bots.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find and index your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many 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 social plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
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 give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Additional Sections Of WordPress For More Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, 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 find and begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
WordPress post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add new content regularly to automatically generate traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take some web professionals a long time to learn.
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 WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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