Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One 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 website or blog, all you have to do is post web content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained 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 website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration stage of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to attract web traffic automatically just by consistently adding web content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are exploring any advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is running smoothly in the gizmo-making manufacturing plant when things suddenly grinds to a stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, walks directly towards the main control box. After staring at the box for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer from his utility belt and makes a very gentle tap near the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery comes back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bewildered, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress site fully configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be automatically 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 many experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, 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 a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to make sure everything will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not just about installing a solution, configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of various different components such as your server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings 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 web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites or online services.
Configuring External Sites
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all content will be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your configuration, content linked back to your site gets automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and website benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to speed up the configuration 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google have been set up, the account details can be used to automate traffic-related settings and notifications 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, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, traffic monitoring code can be added to WordPress via a simple plugin and and sent to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, your information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of 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 web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content 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 accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your web 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 accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text 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 – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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
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 have an influence traffic. For example, choosing 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 impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
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 layout and design elements of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Aspects For WordPress Sites
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your site complies with all legal requirements.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Tags And Categories
Post tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to attract web traffic is add content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help 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 methods.
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