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 platform.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add content on a consistent basis to automatically begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically drive new traffic as you begin posting web content consistently on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here is an amusing story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is running smoothly in the widget factory when suddenly, the machines stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads directly towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a little hammer from his tool belt and makes a single tap near the right-hand corner of the box.
Immediately, every machine starts working once more.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the factory manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Why did he charge them so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog fully set up so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things will function as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your server, your WP site, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your webhosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Web Properties And Services – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your system, content pointing back to your website will be automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site data are set up, the account details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related 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 results, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, traffic monitoring code can be added to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins and and fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, use this information with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts in order to 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 bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various platforms that can be added to your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress 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 WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(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 have purposely configured your site settings 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, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress 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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get 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 feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping the update services list whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 articles, 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s 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 matter what type 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 afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with friends and members of their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your website easily with WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you specify 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 shares), 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 – 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 the design and layout of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Post Tags & Categories
WordPress categories & tags help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engines can understand an XML sitemap. Although Google will index your pages 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is publish fresh content consistently.
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 skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly 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 article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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