Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we 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 to automatically attract traffic is post content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We will show you why an expertly configured site is different. You will also discover what type of work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, you will drive visitors automatically whenever you add new content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo assembly workshop when the machines suddenly stops.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrives shortly afterwards and, without uttering a word, immediately goes towards the main control box. After staring at the control unit for about 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the right corner of the box.
Immediately, everything returns once more to normal.
The manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning 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 be compensated fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog fully set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While many experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring 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 programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different components including your web server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
External Accounts
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content pointing back to your site is automatically added to these platforms. Your content will be given added exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help speed up the process 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 site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, your account information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress 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 activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, traffic monitoring information can be easily integrated with WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and and fed to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account, you can use your information to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts 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 sites and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your 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.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you 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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
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 posts, 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, 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 Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google find and index your website …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Themes
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, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, you need to ensure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
For a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website, go here:
WordPress Tags And Categories
Post categories & post tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find 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 different things. Only search engine bots can understand XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically attract web traffic is post fresh content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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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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