Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article 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 blog, all you have to do to begin bringing traffic is publish great content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and just what kind of work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, you can automatically start getting visitors whenever you post content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any and every advantage they can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For businesses, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
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 a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the widget assembly line when all of a sudden, production ground to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, immediately went to the control box. After staring at the box for what seemed like 5 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny hammer from his tool box and made a gentle tap near the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything sprang back to life.
The floor manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business 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 and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure everything will work to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your server, your website, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified diagram of the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure a number of external sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content is posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external platforms into your system, content pointing back to your website will get automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some third-party web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to 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:
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 you with a range of useful data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmasters, the account information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, traffic monitoring information can be integrated with WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and and fed to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, this information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained 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 are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking 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.
Once you have set up and configured 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.
You should set up profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services 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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services when new posts get 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 …
(Global 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 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 create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely safe from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl 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 Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select which social 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 social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Features For WordPress Traffic Automation
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Tags & Categories
Tags & post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists 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 discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover 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 error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to begin bringing new traffic is add content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers a long time to acquire.
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 explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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