Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to attract new traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to drive new visitors automatically when you start to add web content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are exploring any advantage they can to improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
Things are running smoothly in the gizmo-making assembly line when all of a sudden, everything grounds to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly afterward and heads directly towards the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and springs back to life.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Confused and outraged, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much 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 in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP site fully set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 website?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try 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! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve desired results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things work the way you have planned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and online services.
Integration With External Accounts
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content will be published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your setup, content linked back to your website gets automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will benefit from exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, you can use your details to automate traffic settings 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 performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add traffic tracking information to WordPress using a plugin and send data automatically to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account has been set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners 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.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier 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 website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(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 intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears 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 or blog to get 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 here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services field whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
WP Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is guaranteed immunity from a cyber-attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Other Areas To Consider
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with all government regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags And Categories
Categories & post tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to begin attracting new web traffic is post web content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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