Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site 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 automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically attract new traffic is publish fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start 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 using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically start to get visitors when you start to post content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are exploring every advantage they can to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
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 builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things are humming along in the widget assembly plant when everything comes to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks immediately to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap near the right corner of the box.
Immediately, the whole machine begins working again.
The plant manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
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 get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website fully configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although many experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure things will function to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. It’s not just about installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, 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.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted 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 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites or online services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will get posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content linking back to your site will be automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to help 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 before configuring your settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site details are set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate 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 site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add tracking code to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and send data automatically to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And 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 with traffic 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 both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured 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 have accounts and profiles set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with and post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic system. 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 server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in 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 site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 have an influence web 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 play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get 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 enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including 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 handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google 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 Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their own networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads 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 site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic 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 begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Tags And Categories
Categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your site to automate and improve 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 displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engines can interpret an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using 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.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online users type in the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they are presented with a 404 page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is publish web content consistently to automatically begin attracting more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many 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 addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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