Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to start driving traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to automatically start attracting traffic whenever you add web content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are looking for every opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a 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 explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here’s a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was humming along in the widget-making plant when everything ground to a sudden halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, immediately went to the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for 2 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny little hammer and made a gentle tap near the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything began working once more.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make difficult situations and problems 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 adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific results
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that everything works as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts such as your web hosting server, your website, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
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). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your webhosting account that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both bad and good 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, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content should be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic network, content linking back to your site will be automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help save time 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 settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google Webmaster Tools have been set up, your details can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, account information can be added to all of your pages in WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a hosted and a self-hosted option. 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up in order to configure these as part of 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 bring new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web 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 that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
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 users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. 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 Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
***
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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services area whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief 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 WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely immune from being hacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their own networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website complies with all regulations.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
Post Categories And Post Tags
Post categories and tags help search engines classify and index your website, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
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, whereas an XML sitemap is code that only search engines can understand. Although Google can 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 type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on 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 Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically drive more traffic is post web content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web developers a long time 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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published!
***
"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
***