Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One 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 blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting web traffic is add content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. 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 website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing just by posting web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are researching any opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was going well in the widget-making assembly line when all of a sudden, production stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went directly to the control box. After staring at the schematics for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny hammer and made a gentle tap near the right side of the box.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The plant manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production 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 demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things will work as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many different parts such as your server, your website, and a number of external 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 something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites.
External Accounts
The idea behind adding external sites is that all content should be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content linked back to your website will get automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media accounts, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will receive added exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress 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 Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account and entering site data, the information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, traffic monitoring data can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and and fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, the details can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new visitors 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
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 influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
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 purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
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 and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, 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 a partial feed, 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 check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to ping various update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely immune from a cyber-attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and 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 Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their friends and networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to 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 likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking 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 the design and layout of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(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 System Configuration – Other Features
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
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 unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site, go here:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engine bots can understand an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be presented with a 404 page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to bring web traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take some web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is explained 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 on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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