Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically drive traffic is publish web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of this process. You will learn why an expertly configured WordPress site is different than a professionally configured one. You will also understand how much work is required to ensure that when everything is fully set up and configured, you will bring web traffic automatically when you post new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth looking into any advantage available to improve your performance and results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
There is a significant 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 take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was humming along in the widget factory when the machines suddenly ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer and made a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything started working once more.
The floor manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring settings for the client. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to get certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In 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 website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and online services.
External Accounts
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your setup, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the configuration process 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site data has been entered, you can add tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress using a plugin and feed data automatically to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is with Bing have been set up, you can use your information to automate 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 Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. 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 the next installment of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up in order to integrate these with 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 traffic to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
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
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(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 have specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds 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 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 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 allows your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your website or blog is something you simply cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(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 to improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to choose which 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 sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout 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 themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags & post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps provide visitors with a logical map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps contain code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins 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 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to automatically begin attracting new web traffic is post 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 …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many website developers months 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 explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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