Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post fresh content consistently to automatically start generating more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will understand why an expertly configured site is different. You will also understand how much work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing just by publishing new content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any advantage that can help you increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
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 developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was going well in the widget plant when things suddenly stopped working.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, immediately went to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his shirt pocket and made a single tap near the top-left edge of the box.
Immediately, everything returned once again to normal.
The floor manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although many experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking 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 configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites.
3rd-Party Sites
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content linked back to your site is automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and business will receive additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, use your information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add tracking code to WordPress via a plugin and feed data automatically to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use the information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many 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 the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your traffic system. 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 web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
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 intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains 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 and WordPress will do 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
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this tutorial: How To Configure Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site 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 cannot ignore the importance of securing your web sites.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Important Features To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
For a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site, go here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress tags & categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a an understandable map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search bots can interpret. 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish new content consistently to drive traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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