Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of 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 blog, all you have to do is add new content consistently to begin attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different, and how much work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is fully set up and configured, you can automatically bring visitors simply by regularly adding fresh content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth looking into any and every opportunity you can to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site 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 understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is going just fine in the gizmo factory when all of a sudden, production comes to a complete stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately walks to the main control box. After staring at the board for less than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a single tap about one cm from the right-hand corner of the box.
Immediately, everything in the assembly line begins working once more.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Outraged and bewildered, the manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Why were they expected to pay such a ridiculously high fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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 site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring site settings for the client. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure things work as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different parts including your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web hosting account that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Services
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content is published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content linked back to your site will be automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content receives added exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to speed up the process 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 site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details are set up, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings 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 traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, your account data can be integrated with WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and and sent to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site details, the information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media 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 bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic system. 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 WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
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.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you 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 text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can 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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors 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 text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears 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 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 enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify various update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from a cyber attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easier for search engines to index …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share 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 followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings For Traffic Results
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with all government laws and regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
WordPress post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.
(Post categories help search engines classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors 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!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly filled with code that only search engines can read. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a dead link, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover 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 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 Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is add new content on a regular basis to start attracting traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this process typically takes some website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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