Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of 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 site, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to attract traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of this process. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured site different from a professionally configured site, and what kind of work is required to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, web traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you add web content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
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 worldwide and are researching any and every advantage they can to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
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 has to offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was going fine in the widget assembly line when all of a sudden, production came to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and walked directly to the control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for 5 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy little hammer from his shirt pocket and made a single tap about three inches from the right side of the unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The floor manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website 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 instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things function as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your traffic network, content linking back to your website will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will then be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and 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, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
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 useful information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, your details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress via a plugin and send data instantly to other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning 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 a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, 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 site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various platforms you can add to your own traffic system. Please 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 web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
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 key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries 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 to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify the list of 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, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your 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, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(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 bots.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your options and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Areas For WordPress Traffic Automation
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, 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 start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Post Tags And Categories
WordPress post tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can understand XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google will 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 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to begin bringing more traffic is post content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have 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 Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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