Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically attract more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically start attracting web traffic when you add content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and businesses are exploring every opportunity they can to improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here is a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things were going well in the gizmo-making factory when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly afterward and immediately walked towards the control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap about 2 inches from the bottom-left edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 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 widget factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning 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 ask to be compensated fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges may seem quite easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves 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 programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up to get desired results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure processes will work how you want, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different components including your web server, your web site, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content will get published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your traffic network, content pointing back to your website will be automatically posted to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your 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 Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add tracking information to WordPress using a plugin and send data automatically to other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, this information can be used with 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 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up 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 pages and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator 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 is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and 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 WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically 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 area
By default, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries 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 site to read 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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 posts, 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
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 ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines to find and index …
(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 to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors 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 site, many themes also include options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Other Important Areas To Consider
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase 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 find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Tags And Categories
Post tags & post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your site’s 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 thing. HTML site maps provide readers with a visual map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google can 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 Page
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to start generating new web traffic is publish web content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take some website professionals a long time to learn.
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 covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively with a WordPress-driven website or blog 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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