Welcome to Part 3 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 article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin attracting traffic is post web content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured site, and just what type of work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and fully configured, you can bring visitors automatically when you post new content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are researching every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was going fine in the gizmo plant when the machines suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for less than 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap near the top-left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant sprang to life.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog fully set up so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that everything will work as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities 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 look at these steps in more detail.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, 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 or online services.
3rd-Party Sites Integration
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get syndicated 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 configuration, content pointing back to your site will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google Webmasters, you can use the 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 website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, visitor tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and automatically fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data, your account information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of 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 web traffic system in the next installment 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 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 bring new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
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.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries 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 summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main 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 want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services field whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it also lets you configure 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 share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other Features Of WordPress
Last (but by no means least) in the 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 visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
WordPress post tags & post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
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 correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. HTML site maps provide users with a an understandable map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly filled with code that only search engines can understand. Although Google will 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 – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with a 404 page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web 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 page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to begin bringing more traffic is add content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some website developers months 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 covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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