Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start 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 was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing as you begin to add web content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting ever more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any advantage available to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured website gives you a significant advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site 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 a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with an anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were going just fine in the gizmo workshop when everything ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived within in less than 30 minutes and, without saying a word, headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool box and made a gentle tap about one inch from the right side of the unit.
Immediately, everything in the assembly plant sprang to life.
The plant manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress blog fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While many experts often make complicated situations and problems look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that everything works as envisioned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web server, your website, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external services to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically posted to these platforms. Your content and website benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some of these external sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help save time 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, visitor tracking code can be added to all web pages in WordPress using plugins and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, you can use the details with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful 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 system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(You can 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 readers 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 summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds 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 view 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services section when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 blogs linked to from your articles, 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 allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
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 guaranteed immunity from being hacked.
(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 botnets.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their friends and networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – 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 layout and design of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Additional Sections To Configure For Improved Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance 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 when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your site stays compliant with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Categories
WordPress post tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
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 applications discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on an invalid link, they will normally be greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 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 dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to begin bringing more traffic is add fresh content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take some website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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