Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin attracting new web traffic is add great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that new traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin publishing web content to your website.
WordPress Web 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 competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are researching any advantage they can that can help you improve their performance online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was going well in the gizmo manufacturing plant when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walked towards the control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a single tap about one cm from the left side of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line came back to life.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your site fully set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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?)
While experts often make complex things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of various different components such as your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring 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 email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
External Web Properties And Solutions – Configuration
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external platforms to your network, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will be given additional exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google are set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress using a simple plugin and feed data automatically to many other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use the details with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence.
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 these features into your traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
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 page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections 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 a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
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 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 a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, 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 summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the 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 website security.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to specify 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 shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ 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 help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website 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 situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress categories and tags help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can index your pages 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Another Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error 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 several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to automatically attract traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this process can take some website developers a long time to learn.
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 the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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