Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish content on a regular basis to attract new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence 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 where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing simply by adding fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are looking for any advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are humming along in the gizmo factory when all of a sudden, everything grounds to a stop.
As no one can figure out what is wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and walks straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy little hammer from his tool box and makes a single tap about one cm from the right-hand corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and comes back to life.
The plant manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Angry to the point of feeling outrage, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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?)
Although experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for a client. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to get desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to make sure everything will function the way you have planned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts such as your web server, your site, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart 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 better look at these steps.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and online services.
External Accounts
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content is published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your configuration, content pointing back to your website gets automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media accounts, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings 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 WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Search Console are set up, use this information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your web pages in WordPress via a plugin and feed data automatically to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site details, use this information with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can integrate these with 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 attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get 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 main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 sites 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WP Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve 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 handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is completely immune from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving the way search engines find, classify and index your website …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which 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 plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Areas
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.
This includes:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Categories
Post categories and tags help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays 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 web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a logical map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search engines can read. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with a 404 page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 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.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add content on a regular basis to automatically generate web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website and proven online marketing methods.
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