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.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to attract web traffic is publish content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained 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 existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how 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 how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you add new content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any and every opportunity you can to improve your results and performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was humming along in the gizmo assembly plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterward and, without uttering a word, walked immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a single tap about 1 cm from the bottom-left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The plant manager was filled with joy 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 the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site 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 instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems quite simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to get certain results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your server, your website, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved.
Your 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 fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Sites
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published from one central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content pointing back to your site will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will then receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account, the information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, the information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up 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 get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level 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 an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
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 social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
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 key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated below the Update Services 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 ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can 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 on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is immune from cyber-attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social share plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also include options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Additional Configuration Steps For WordPress Traffic Automation
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engine bots can read XML sitemaps. Although 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.
404 Error Page – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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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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