Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to begin bringing web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to start bringing traffic automatically when you begin to publish fresh content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
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.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going well in the gizmo factory when all of a sudden, everything stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a single tap near the left-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line comes back to life.
The plant manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
Bewildered to the point of feeling outrage, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite 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 basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure things will work as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your site, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure various third-party sites.
Integration With External Solutions
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will then be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings to 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site details, the account 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 website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to WordPress via plugins and feed data instantly to various other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details with Bing are set up, your details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. 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 some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts before you can 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 visitors to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all the well-known 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 the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are various solutions that can be added to your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
Configuring WordPress
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.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you 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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to ping the update services list when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugins – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl and 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 GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to 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 followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Post Tags
Tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically drive more web traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers months 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 WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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