Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to generate more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin publishing fresh content on a consistent basis on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any opportunity you can to improve your performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
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 has to offer.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
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 with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything is humming along in the gizmo assembly line when all of a sudden, the machinery stops.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, heads straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap near the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, the plant springs back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
Furious, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that everything will function as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components including your server, your site, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites and online services.
External Sites And Accounts – Configuration
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content will be published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your traffic system, content linking back to your website will get automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be given added exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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 before configuring your site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, use your details to automate 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 traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and site details has been entered, you can add tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress via a simple plugin and send data instantly to many other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account, you can use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
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 explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts before you can configure these as part of 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Set up profiles with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
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 account.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
Configuring WordPress
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 Settings
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 to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to notify all the update services you have listed whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of web security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily with WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
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 design and layout aspects of your website, some themes also give you options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Configuration Areas For WordPress Sites
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your online 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 not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from 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 Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to drive traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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