Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin bringing new web traffic is add great content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained 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 site, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing when you start to publish content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring every advantage available to improve your own performance and results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is going just fine in the gizmo-making workshop when things suddenly comes to a stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and heads directly towards the main control box. After staring at the schematics for 2 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his pocket and makes a very gentle tap about one cm from the left edge of the box.
Immediately, every machine comes back to life.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Feeling angry, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than five minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for spending years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be immediately 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 complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for the client. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In 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 your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
Third-Party Services
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your traffic system, content pointing back to your site is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your website will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration process 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 site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google Webmaster Tools, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications 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 website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to various other useful 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 has been set up, you can use the details with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO 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 option if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to 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 pages and bring new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(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 or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get 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 feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their own networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, 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 find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
WordPress post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial 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 site 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 Not Found – Another Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish great content regularly to automatically begin bringing more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes many website professionals 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading, click here:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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