Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to generate traffic is add fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured site, and how much work needs to be done to ensure that when all is fully configured, you will get new traffic automatically just by publishing content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are researching any advantage they believe will help them improve their performance and results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Stage Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to understand the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was running smoothly in the gizmo factory when production suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, walked immediately towards the control box. After staring at the board for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy little hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap near the left edge of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and began to work again.
The floor manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request for payment of services rendered for $5,000.
The manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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?)
While the solution to many challenges may seem ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure things will work as planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a plugin, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different parts such as your server, your site, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web 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 aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and online services.
External Web Properties And Solutions – Configuration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your setup, content linked back to your site will be automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will be given additional exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the external sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to speed up the 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 website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Webmasters have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress 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, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, account code can be added to all web pages in WordPress using a 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 Webmasters. Once your account and site data are set up, your information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
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 explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up before you can 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 social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Set up profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
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 is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – 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 have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 visitors will see your content 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 shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify your list of update services when 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 …
(WordPress Settings – 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 blogs 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
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 website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is safe from cyber-attacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and bots.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in 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 online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include 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 handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress tags & categories help search engines classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. 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 bots can interpret. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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.
404 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically attract traffic is add new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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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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