Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post new content on a regular basis to automatically attract traffic!)
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 site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin adding fresh content on a consistent basis to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
There is a 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 a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here is an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is humming along in the widget-making workshop when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and heads out directly to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his tool box and makes a gentle tap near the right-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, every machine comes back to life.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Furious, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog fully 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 immediately 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 many experts often make complex situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything functions to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many parts such as your web hosting server, your WP site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, 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 site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and online services.
Third-Party Web Properties
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your system, content linked back to your website will get automatically added to these platforms. Your content will benefit from added exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google, the account details can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add visitor tracking information to WordPress using a simple plugin and send data automatically to other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account, the account details can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to 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 attract new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various solutions you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
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 points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described 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 – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 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, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, 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 your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify all the update services you have listed whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – 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 blogs linked to from your content, 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
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
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. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find and index your website …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing 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. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing 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 social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Settings
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 design and layout aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories & tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A visitor site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for 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 web address or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with a 404 page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically attract new web traffic is post new content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing methods.
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