Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
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 generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to attract traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 has been 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 traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin adding new content on a consistent basis on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and businesses are researching any and every advantage available to improve their performance and results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Phase 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 can offer you.
Here is a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate 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?
Everything was humming along in the widget-making workshop when all of a sudden, things ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and walked immediately towards the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for about 5 minutes, the expert then produced a little hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap about two and half cm from the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The floor manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a request of payment for services for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other 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 driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems is often ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring site settings for a client. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure things will work as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase 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 flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web-hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites.
Configuring External Services
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will be posted to one central location (your 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 services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site data are set up, use this information with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add visitor tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, you can use your information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 this into your traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts 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 drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
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 RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be added to your own 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 web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
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 points.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 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, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to notify the list of update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely immune from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When 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 presented 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 with friends and members of their social networks 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 with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which 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 share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – 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 website, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a few 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 Aspects For WordPress
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance 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 situations that can hurt your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Visitor Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for 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 structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly filled with code that only search engines can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from 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 Page – Another Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to start generating more web traffic is post web content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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