Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we 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 content on a regular basis to bring web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different. You will also discover what kind of work is required to make sure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can attract traffic automatically when you start to publish fresh content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting so much more competitive, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start and a significant competitive advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional 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 a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was humming along in the gizmo assembly workshop when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the schematics for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny little hammer and made a gentle tap about one and half cm from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line came back to life.
The floor manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately 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 many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get desired results
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that everything will function as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various external sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web 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 your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites.
3rd-Party Web Properties
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your network, content linked back to your website is automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some external web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the process 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 site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, use the details with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress via a simple plugin and send data automatically to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, your details can be used 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 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can 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 pages and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
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 account.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress 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
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
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 – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users 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 get 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify various update services whenever new posts are 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 unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at 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 blog is immune from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social share plugins let you choose which 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 protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
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 layout and design aspects of your site, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(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 Traffic Automation
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they will normally be greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found 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 page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to start generating more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process can take many web developers months 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 explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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