Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content consistently to automatically begin bringing new traffic!)
In Part Two, 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 website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. The focus of this section is to help you understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different than a professionally configured one. You will also understand what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is set up and configured, you can automatically start getting new visitors simply by publishing fresh content on a regular basis to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are exploring every advantage available to improve their results and performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were going according to schedule in the gizmo assembly line when all machinery suddenly came to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and immediately went towards the main control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool belt and made a gentle tap near the bottom-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery sprang to life.
The manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog fully set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from Facebook and Twitter 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges may seem ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure everything will function how you want, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your server, your website, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart of the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web-hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites.
3rd-Party Accounts Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, get distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your configuration, content pointing back to your site will get automatically posted to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help 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 WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, the account details can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your account and site details has been entered, traffic monitoring information can be added to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, your information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online 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 Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own web 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 web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your 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
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin 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 …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(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 web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services area when 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 unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with 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 website or blog is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bots and hackers.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using 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 post messages, 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 visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
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 results.
Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find 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 thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engines can understand. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to begin driving traffic is add new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this process typically takes some website professionals a long time 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 explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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