Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is add great content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of this process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to attract new visitors automatically as you begin posting new content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are researching any advantage they believe will improve their performance and results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have an immediate 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 builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed 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 little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was humming along in the widget-making manufacturing plant when things suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately headed towards the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the right-hand side of the box.
Immediately, everything started working once again.
The manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web server, your website, and various third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will automatically get syndicated to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content linking back to your website is automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and business will receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site data with Google Search Console are set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related 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 results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple plugin and feed data instantly to other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, your information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications 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 a self-hosted and a hosted option. 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 a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
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 many different platforms that can be added to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
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 key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
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 title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, 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 summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is guaranteed immunity from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Settings – Configuration
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 layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, 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 when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Tags And Post Categories
Categories & tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
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 site’s 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 not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to begin attracting more traffic is add content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web developers 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 covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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