Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and 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, all you have to do to begin bringing traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to drive visitors automatically simply by adding fresh content on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are exploring every opportunity they can to improve their results and performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally 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 difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything is going just fine in the gizmo-making factory when all of a sudden, things comes to a halt.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny hammer from his pocket and makes a gentle tap about three inches from the right edge of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery starts working again.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
With a sense of outrage, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why were they charged such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube 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 website?)
While the solution to many problems is often ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to get specific results
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that everything will function as envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your web site, and various third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simple diagram of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your traffic system, content linked back to your site is automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external web properties and online services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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 Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmaster Tools account and site data are set up, use this information 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 website’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add tracking information to WordPress via plugins and feed data instantly to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing have been set up, the details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web 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 web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site 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 own RebelMouse page.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, 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 set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into 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 a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – 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 have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 Settings
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 have an 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 blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify the list of update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind 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 securing your site.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify 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 likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
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 layout and design elements of your website, some themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Results
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase 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 hurt your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with all government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
HTML Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial 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 mostly code that only search engines can read. Although Google will 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 can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish content regularly to automatically start generating new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process can take some website developers a long time to acquire.
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 explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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