Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is publish web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically begin bringing traffic when you post fresh content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are researching every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was working according to schedule in the gizmo assembly workshop when all of a sudden, everything ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for 2 minutes or less, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap near the left-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The floor 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 manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for less than five minutes 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems can seem quite simple once it’s been implemented, 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 installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure things will work the way you have planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts including your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites or online services.
Configuring External Services
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically fed to these platforms. Your business will then be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmasters, use the details with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add your account information to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to many other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account with Bing, you can use the details to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both 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 a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
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 RebelMouse page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your web traffic system. Please 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 web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
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 ping the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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
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 have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services 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 …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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 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
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your site.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
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 layout and design of your site, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
Tags & Categories
Tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.
(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 review and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like 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.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically begin attracting more traffic is add new content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"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
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