Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing as you start publishing web content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive, it’s worth looking into every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start from the moment your website is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a significant 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was going well in the gizmo-making factory when the machines suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately headed towards the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for what seemed like 3 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a very gentle tap near the top-left edge of the box.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The floor manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of services rendered totalling $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialled the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 is often ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things will work as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your server, your site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
Third-Party Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content is posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic network, content linked back to your website is automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and website benefits from increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to help 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use the account information to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, visitor tracking information can be integrated with WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been with Bing have been set up, you can use the details to automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to configure these as part of 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 drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your 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 visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears 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 view the rest of the content from summaries, 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 enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to ping your list of update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress 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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are 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 web site is safe from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you 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 easily share your content with their networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Features – Configuration
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 layout and design aspects of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about why it’s important to have a legally compliant website here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide visitors with a an understandable representation of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will 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.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they will typically be presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect 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 web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to attract web traffic is post new content on a regular basis.
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 System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading this article, click here:
This article is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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