Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site 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 generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to drive web traffic is add great content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin adding fresh content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are exploring any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, your business has a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo assembly factory when all of a sudden, all machines stops.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives soon afterward and walks directly towards the control box. After staring at the wiring board for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a single tap about 1 cm from the left side of the unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once again.
The manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Unable to contain his anger, the manager calls the expert. Why have they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make complicated solutions look simple, 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 settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure things work as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and online services.
Integration With External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content gets published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content linking back to your site is automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the web properties and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your settings to help speed up the process 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account has been set up, your account details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress 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, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site details has been entered, you can add tracking code to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been with Bing are set up, your account information can be used with web traffic-related 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 a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, 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 this into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get 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.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier 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 allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
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 Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described below 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 chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to ping all the update services you have listed when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Plugins
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.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site 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 blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Important Sections To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as 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 site complies with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags And Categories
Tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide users with a visual map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search engines can interpret. Although Google will index your site just using 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.
404 Page – Another Source Of Traffic!
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they will normally be greeted with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to drive traffic is post fresh content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals months to acquire.
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 article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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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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