Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content regularly to attract new traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured website. You will also understand how much work is required to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can drive new traffic automatically when you post content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are exploring any and every opportunity they can to improve their results and performance online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over the competition. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as 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 set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to understand the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
All is humming along in the widget-making plant when everything suddenly comes to a stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for 5 minutes or less, the expert then produces a tiny hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the bottom-right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for $5,000.
With great anger, the factory manager rings the expert. Why did he charge them so much for so little time delivering a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get certain results
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that things function to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting 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 configure a number of third-party sites or online solutions.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content will be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external services to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically fed to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will then receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use your account information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. 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, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic tracking information to WordPress using a plugin and feed data instantly to other online applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data, use your information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify 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 …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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 Settings
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 a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify all the update services you have listed when new posts are 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 Screen)
Discussion
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 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from a cyberattack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their social communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users 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 help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google can index your pages 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to drive more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process can take many website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly 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 section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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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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