Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting more traffic is post content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start 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 how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start getting visitors as you begin to add fresh content consistently to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about every opportunity you can to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website 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, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was going well in the gizmo-making factory when all of a sudden, things ground to a stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for what seemed like 3 minutes or less, the expert then produced a little hammer from his shirt pocket and made a gentle tap about 2 inches from the left-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine came back to life.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived 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 consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things will work exactly as you have planned, 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 challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing a solution, tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web-hosting account that affect how your website will handle 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 traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
External Accounts
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external services to your setup, content linked back to your site will be automatically published on these platforms. Your content and site will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, you can use the information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress 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, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, traffic monitoring code can be added to all of your web pages in WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account has been with Bing have been set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring 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.
Make sure you have set up 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 pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally 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 section
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from summaries, 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify the list of update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site 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 sites is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content 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 grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
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 representation of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can understand. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from 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.
Your 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post content on a regular basis to automatically start generating new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web developers months to learn.
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 covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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