Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 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 to automatically start driving traffic is add new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing just by publishing new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting so much more competitive, it’s worth exploring any advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was running smoothly in the widget assembly factory when the equipment suddenly ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, walked immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a single tap about three and half cm from the left-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, all machines inside the assembly plant returned once again to normal.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a 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. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 the solution to many challenges can seem ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve certain results
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that everything works as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and online services.
External Sites & Solutions – Configuration
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your setup, content linked back to your site will be automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and site benefits from additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your site to 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 settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add your account code to WordPress using plugins and send data automatically to various other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use this information with traffic 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 option 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 automated web traffic generation 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 get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking 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 system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
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 own RebelMouse page.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, 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 will do 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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from a partial feed, 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 ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify the update services list 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 this section is 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
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 website is immune from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easily indexable …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with 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 traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business 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 complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Tags & Categories
WordPress tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(WordPress post categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engine bots can interpret XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish great content regularly to automatically drive web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take many web professionals months to acquire.
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 section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of an tutorial series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-powered 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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