Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start generating traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to automatically bring web traffic whenever you publish web content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are exploring every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Stage 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 developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with an amusing story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was going just fine in the widget factory when suddenly, things ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, immediately went towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for what seemed like 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny little hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap about 1 cm from the bottom-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request of payment for services for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ridiculously high fee for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment 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 web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website 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 various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that things work how you have planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your website, and various third-party sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website 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 simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your webhosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
External Services
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external platforms to your traffic system, content pointing back to your website will get automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these external web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, you can use this information with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add your account code to all of your pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various 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 the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts before you can 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 accounts and get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. 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 lets you add a 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 website.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your web 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.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can 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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically ping various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social share plugins let you choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
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 layout and design elements of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Features To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags and post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google can index your site just using 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.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing more web 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 …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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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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