Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is add content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different. You will also learn just what kind of work is required to ensure that when all is fully configured, you can automatically get visitors simply by publishing new content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching every advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a 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 can offer you.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with 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 type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are going just fine in the gizmo-making factory when the machines suddenly stops.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a single tap near the right edge of the box.
Immediately, the plant returns once again to normal.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Unable to hide his anger and bewilderment, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed 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 above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 driving traffic to your site?)
Although experts often make complex things look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring settings for the client. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to make sure everything will work the way you have planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many components including your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites …
(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 simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your webhosting account that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage 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 includes looking at things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and/or online solutions.
Integration With External Web Properties
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external sites into your configuration, content pointing back to your website is automatically published on these platforms. Your content and site will be given added exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help speed up the process 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)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Webmaster Tools have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, account information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account is set up, you can use the details to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful 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 series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 sites and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. 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.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary 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 your WordPress site 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 own RebelMouse website.
There are various platforms you can add to your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy 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.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays 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 to view 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping the list of update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress – Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely immune from being targeted.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google find, classify and index your web pages …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins allow you to select which social 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 likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your website, many themes also give you options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings For Improved Traffic
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:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both 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 commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, go here:
WordPress Post Tags And Categories
Post categories & tags help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although Google will index your pages 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 results in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When online users enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A 404 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 traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is post great content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers months to acquire.
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 WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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