Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. You will understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different from a professionally configured one. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, traffic will automatically start flowing simply by consistently publishing web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring any and every opportunity they can to improve their results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was going well in the gizmo workshop when the machines suddenly came to a halt.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and walked directly to the main control box. After staring at the box for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about 3 cm from the left-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line sprang back to life.
The 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 manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production 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 demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site configured so all you ever had 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 the solution to many challenges may seem quite simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that things function as expected, etc.
(Generating web 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 and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites.
External Sites
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your network, content linking back to your website will get automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will benefit from exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
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 important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmaster Tools account is set up, the account details can be used with web traffic 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 results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add your account code to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to many other applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, you can use this information with 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 Two, WordPress offers users 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 some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
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 influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, 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.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at 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 handling 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 afford to ignore the importance of securing your sites.
(Security Plugins stop 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 botnets.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Things To Consider
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your site complies with all laws and regulations.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
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 applications discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on an invalid link, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically attract new traffic is add new content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some web 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 addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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