Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish great content regularly to bring web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to automatically start attracting web traffic simply by consistently publishing web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any advantage available to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website 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 describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was humming along in the widget assembly line when all of a sudden, production stopped.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked immediately to the control box. After staring at the box for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy little hammer from his pocket and made a single tap about three inches from the right corner of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery sprang to life.
The plant manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, 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 less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog fully set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically 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 website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure things work as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many different components including your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing 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 fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and services.
External Services
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content gets posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic network, content pointing back to your website will be automatically posted to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, your information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to other online applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, the account information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
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 traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking 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 (we will look at some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
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 account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a 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 site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress 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
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields 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 a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
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 chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services 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
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Changing WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(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 botnets.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which social 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 followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In 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, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories & Post Tags
Post tags & post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engines can interpret an XML sitemap. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they will normally be greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel 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 page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically attract more web traffic is post great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.
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