Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress 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 series, we 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 drive more web traffic is publish fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can get new visitors automatically whenever you publish web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive and businesses are researching every opportunity they can to improve their results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
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’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is running smoothly in the widget-making plant when all of a sudden, everything comes to a stop.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks directly to the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for less than 5 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his pocket and makes a single tap about 1 cm from the right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything inside the assembly line comes back to life.
The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Bewildered and confused, the manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why did he charge them such a ludicrous fee for so little time delivering a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your blog set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other online properties would be immediately 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 website?)
While the solution to many challenges may seem quite simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that things will work as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different parts such as your server, your site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your 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 tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites or online services.
Configuring External Services
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content should be published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the external sites 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use your information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add your account information to WordPress via plugins and send data instantly to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account is set up, your information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful 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 this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts 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 pages and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After 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 site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress 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 intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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
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, your choice to display the full content 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 site to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you would 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 a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your websites.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to index, it allows you to configure 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 your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Sections To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, 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 begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding why it’s important to have a compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
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 Process.
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 set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a link pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 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 plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish content regularly to automatically bring more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process can take some web professionals a long time to acquire.
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 series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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