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Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.

In Part 1 of this 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 or blog, all you have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to attract new traffic!)

In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained 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 has been built with WordPress.

(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)

In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing simply by adding new content on a consistent basis to your WordPress site.

WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase

Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are researching any opportunity they can to get better results online.

The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured website gives your business a flying start from the moment your site is launched.

Configuration Is The Difference

There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.

Here is a simple way to describe the differences:

With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!

(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)

Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.

To illustrate this point here is an amusing little story.

Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?

Everything is going just fine in the gizmo plant when suddenly, production grinds to a complete stop.

As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.

Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walks towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer from his utility belt and makes a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the left-hand side of the box.

Immediately, the plant returns once again to normal.

The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.

A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.

Confused and bewildered, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.

The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:

The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.

In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a costly problem?

Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 website?)

While 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 installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:

• Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
• Which services need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
• Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure things function as planned, etc.

(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)

This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.

Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different parts such as your web hosting server, your web site, and various external sites or online services …

(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)

If we create a simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …

(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)

Let’s examine these steps.

Your Server

We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …

(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)

Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.

This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …

(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)

After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.

Integration With External Solutions

The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content should be published from one 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.

Once you add these external sites to your network, content pointing back to your website will be automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your content and website will benefit from exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.

Some of the sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to 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:

Google Search Console

(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)

Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.

Once your Google Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, you can use your information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.

Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data instantly to other useful applications and web properties.

Bing Data And Tools

(Bing Data And Tools)

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details, use this information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.

WordPress.com

(WordPress.com)

As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted and a hosted option. 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 some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.

Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts

(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new traffic to your site)

You will need to have already set up your social media accounts 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 bring new traffic to your site.

You should have profiles set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail further below and in the Automation phase).

(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)

Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.

There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.

For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …

RebelMouse

(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)

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 RebelMouse website.

There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.

Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.

Configuring WordPress For Traffic

The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.

Let’s go over some of the important points.

Global Settings – WordPress

Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …

(WordPress settings section)

General Settings

Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …

(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)

Writing Settings

The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …

(Global Settings – Writing Settings)

As stated in the Update Services section,

When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …

Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services section

By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …

(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)

You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …

(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 web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary 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 decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.

Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to notify all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …

(Global Settings – Reading Settings)

Discussion Settings

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 Screen)

Permalink Settings

Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …

(Settings Menu – Permalinks)

The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …

(Configuring search-friendly URLS)

If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks

Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation

WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.

Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site

Blog Defender

Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with 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, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your site.

(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)

Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets.

Go here for more information:

• Blog Defender Review

WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO

SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easily indexable …

(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)

A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.

Social Sharing Plugins

Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.

(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)

There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.

Most social plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.

WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration

As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.

For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …

(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)

With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …

(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)

WordPress Traffic System – Other Areas To Consider

Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.

This includes the following:

Website Legal Pages

Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.

If you make money online, you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.

(Is Your Site Compliant?)

We have created a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:

• How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Categories And Post Tags

Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.

(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)

As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.

In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.

Add A Site Map

A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your website content …

(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)

Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same 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 engine bots can read. 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), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.

Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found

When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 page …

(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)

A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …

(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)

Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.

WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary

Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to start generating more traffic is post new content on a consistent basis.

The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …

(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)

The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some web professionals a long time to acquire.

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 section of the WordPress Traffic System series.

This is the end of Section Three

To keep reading about this topic, click here:

• Web Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – Discover How To Automatically Increase Your Traffic For Your Business

This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.

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