Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish great content on a regular basis to start generating new traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start to get traffic just by posting fresh content on a consistent basis to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are looking for any and every advantage they believe will help them increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website 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 is a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with an anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was going well in the widget-making plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, walked immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for what seemed like about 5 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap near the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the machines returned to normal.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be automatically 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which options you need to configure to make sure things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, 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 is to configure a number of external sites and services.
Integration With External Accounts
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content should be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your traffic system, content pointing back to your website is automatically published on these platforms. Your website receives exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, you can use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings 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 site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your web pages in WordPress via a simple plugin and send data automatically to various other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, the details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to integrate these with 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 bring new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots 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 setup and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act 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 allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
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.
Global Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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
***
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 have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify your list of update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
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 type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your site is something you cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages 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 can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Tags & Post Categories
Post tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, 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.
Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites 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 two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is code that only search bots can read. Although search engines like Google can index your pages 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to start generating new web traffic is add new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
***