Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part One 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 is publish new content regularly to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things 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 will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing when you publish web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation 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 business getting increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about every advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. An expertly configured website gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
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 a whole lot more work go into building and integrating 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.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything is running smoothly in the widget manufacturing plant when suddenly, things grinds to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives soon afterwards and, without uttering a word, walks straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the board for 3 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the bottom-left side of the box.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for $5,000.
Angry and bordering on a sense of outrage, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why did he charge them such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other online properties would be automatically 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 website?)
While the solution to many problems is often quite easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that processes will run as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Accounts
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content is published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your setup, content pointing back to your website gets automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content receives increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings 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 WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmaster Tools 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 reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, the information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, traffic tracking information can be added to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Data And 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 details, use the information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow 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 show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 pages and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, 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 of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned 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 enables WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their friends and networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social 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 areas on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Features To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories And Post Tags
WordPress post tags & categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, 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 tags and categories during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins 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
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error 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 several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is add web content consistently to automatically generate more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process can take many web developers months to acquire.
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 addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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