Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and 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 publish fresh content regularly to automatically generate traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of this process. 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can attract new visitors automatically whenever you post web content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are exploring any and every advantage they believe will get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was humming along in the widget manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things came to a stop.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the control box. After staring at the box for 5 minutes, the expert then took out a little hammer from his utility belt and made a gentle tap about 3 inches from the right-hand corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress site set up so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 site?)
Although experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also 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 need to be set up to get specific results
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things will work to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many components including your web server, your web site, and various third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
External Sites & Accounts – Configuration
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your configuration, content linked back to your website is automatically syndicated 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 will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some sites 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account, use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related 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 results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and entered your site data, tracking information can be added to all of your web pages in WordPress via plugins and instantly sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use your details with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various 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 automated web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various solutions that can be added to your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 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 web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services area when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on setting up permalinks, go here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that 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 site for dealing with the effects of 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, web security is something you cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and bots.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
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 like Google and Bing to find, crawl 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 Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site with WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality 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)
Additional Sections To Configure
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with government regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Tags & Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
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 applications discover your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a logical map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google can 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 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they will typically be greeted with an error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to automatically start generating web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many 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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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