Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part Two, 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 things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically bring new traffic as you begin posting content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming so much more competitive, it’s worth learning about every opportunity you can to improve your performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site 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 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 explain the key difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is going fine in the widget assembly line when production suddenly stops.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrives soon afterwards and, without uttering a word, walks immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for less than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a single tap near the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the whole machine comes back to life.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Unable to contain his anger and bewilderment, the manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(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 problems often seems ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that everything will work to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the steps 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 take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure a number of external sites.
Integration With External Accounts
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will get posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic system, content linked back to your site will get automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website benefits from increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site data are set up, use this information with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) 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 behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and entered your site data, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and send data automatically to various other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various 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 automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
You should set up profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those 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 many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. 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 – 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 RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 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 have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view 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 your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 articles, 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
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial about setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to 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 WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely safe from a cyber-attack.
(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 details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and 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.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you choose 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 protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
Categories And Post Tags
Tags and post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they will normally be greeted with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web 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.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to automatically begin driving web traffic is add content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many website developers months 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 the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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