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 site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to automatically bring more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 with 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 the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that new visitors will automatically start flowing when you begin posting web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are researching any and every advantage they can that can help you improve their performance and results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
Configuration Is 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 is a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things are going well in the gizmo assembly workshop when all machinery suddenly comes to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads out directly to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for what seems like about 5 minutes, the expert then produces a little hammer and makes a single tap near the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the factory manager dials the expert. Why had he charged them so much for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice 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 drive visitors consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress site set up so all you had 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 this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve certain results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything works exactly as you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites.
Configuring External Services
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help speed up the configuration process 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’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account is set up, you can use the account information to automate traffic 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 results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress using plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account, use your information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts before you can 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 drive new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
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 technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – 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 purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view 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 most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping various update services 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, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely immune from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social 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 social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content 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 – Other Aspects To Consider
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
For a detailed article on why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, go here:
Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags and categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your site 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 correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post new content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take many website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
- Web Traffic Blueprint Part Four – Discover How To Turn Your WordPress Website Into A Traffic Machine
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively with a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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