Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is publish web content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of this process. We will explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and how much work is required to ensure that when everything is fully configured, you will attract web traffic automatically when you publish new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Configuration Process 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 website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here is an amusing story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was going just fine in the widget-making assembly line when things suddenly ground to a stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived soon afterward and, without uttering a word, immediately walked to the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for 2 minutes or less, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool belt and made a single tap about three and half cm from the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and sprang to life once again.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges may seem ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything works how you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your server, your website, and a number of external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites and/or online solutions.
Configuring External Services
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content pointing back to your site gets automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content receives exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to have accounts 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site data, your account information 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 website’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, your account information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin and and sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, the account information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 these features into your automated web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up 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 pages and drive new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated 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 intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can 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
This section affects how visitors will see your content 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 to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is guaranteed immunity from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors 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, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Features For More Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas 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 how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google will index your site 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 can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When online users enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 error page) …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect 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 several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish fresh content regularly to automatically drive more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers a long time to acquire.
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 addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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