Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing traffic is post great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand 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 existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that new visitors will automatically start flowing when you start adding content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting ever more competitive, it’s worth exploring every advantage available to improve your results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start from the moment your 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with an anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything is humming along in the widget-making factory when things grind to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 2 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a gentle tap about 1 inch from the right-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole machine springs to life once more.
The floor manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who 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.
Bewildered and bordering on a sense of outrage, the manager calls the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for less than 5 minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges can seem ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things function as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Web Properties & Accounts – Configuration
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content will get posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your configuration, content linking back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your website will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some third-party web properties 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account, the account information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, visitor tracking information can be integrated with WordPress using plugins and and sent to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, you can use your details with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
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 social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms you can add to your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
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.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below 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 configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(WordPress 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
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 influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get 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 most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable WordPress to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about 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 drive 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. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your site is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google to index …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide 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 traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit 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 Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog here:
Categories & Post Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap contains code that only search bots can read. 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), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error 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 web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add new content on a consistent basis to automatically bring more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this process typically takes many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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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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