Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we 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 to begin bringing more traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to attract new traffic automatically when you post web content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are researching any opportunity they can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
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 an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional labor 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 a story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is going fine in the gizmo-making workshop when things suddenly comes to a stop.
As no one can figure out what is wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the board for 5 minutes, the expert then produces a little hammer and makes a single tap near the top-right side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and returns once again to normal.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Unable to hide his anger, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring site settings for clients. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve certain results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure processes will run to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your web server, your site, and various external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Services
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content gets published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your system, content linked back to your website will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the third-party sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you tell 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 diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account is with Google have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, visitor tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a plugin and automatically sent to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing, use this information to automate web traffic-related 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 both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can act 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 a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
Configuring WordPress
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent 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 text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of 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
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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text 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 content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read 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 enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to ping all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
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 or blog is completely immune from being targeted.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social sharing plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, some themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured 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)
Additional Configuration Features For Your WordPress Site
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help understanding the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
Tags And Categories
Categories and tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engines can read 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), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is post content consistently to begin attracting more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process can take many website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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