Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing as you start publishing web content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are researching any advantage they believe will get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in 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.
To illustrate this point here is a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was going fine in the gizmo-making plant when all of a sudden, things stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and headed out immediately to the control box. After staring at the board for 5 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer from his pocket and made a gentle tap near the left edge of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line began to work once again.
The floor manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated 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 involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything will function as envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of a number of different components including your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of external sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your system, content linked back to your website will be automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site benefits from increased exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help 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 WordPress site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account has been set up, you can use this information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, account information can be added to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use your details with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO 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 option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various 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 sites and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of 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 setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to 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 social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact 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 summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping your list of update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your posts, 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
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with 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, securing your web sites is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select 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 shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Additional WordPress Sections
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding the importance of having a compliant website, see this article:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Post categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. 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.
Your 404 Page
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically begin bringing web traffic is post fresh content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of 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 as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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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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