Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to drive traffic is add content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by posting new content on a consistent basis on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth looking into every advantage that can help you get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. With an expertly configured website, you have an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is moving along in the gizmo assembly line when things suddenly grinds to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, heads directly towards the control box. After staring silently at the board for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his tool box and makes a single tap near the top-left edge of the box.
Immediately, everything returns to normal.
The plant manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress blog configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 many experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve certain results
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and services.
Third-Party Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically added to these platforms. Your site will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to be 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, the information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, account information can be added to all of your web pages in WordPress using a plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use your information to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to 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 accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are various sites and platforms you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – 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 specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 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 influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get 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 main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed whenever new posts get 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 unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling 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 simply cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find and index your website …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to 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 Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
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 layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Important Aspects To Consider
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website, go here:
WordPress Tags & Categories
Post tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engines can interpret XML sitemaps. 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 results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(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 plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish web content on a regular basis to start generating more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many website developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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