Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to start generating more traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can begin to get traffic automatically simply by posting fresh content on a consistent basis to your site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching any and every advantage available to improve their results and performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
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 builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s 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 site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were going just fine in the widget assembly factory when everything ground to a sudden halt.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for what seemed like about 2 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy little hammer from his utility belt and made a gentle tap near the left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request of payment for services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were charged 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 in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website set up so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be instantly 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure things work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content is published from a central location (your site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external services to your traffic system, content linking back to your website will get automatically added to these platforms. Your site will benefit from additional exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help save time 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add tracking code to WordPress using plugins and send data instantly to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, the information can be used to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your social 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 accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS 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.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up 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 Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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
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 web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping various update services whenever 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 …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings 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 permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WP Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling 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 simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to 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+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose 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 followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Aspects For WordPress Sites
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor 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 start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
Tags & Categories
Post categories & tags help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors 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 web 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 can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically start attracting traffic is post great content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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