Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish web content on a regular basis to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin adding web content on a consistent basis to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any opportunity you can to increase your own competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, you have a flying start and a significant competitive advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going just fine in the widget-making assembly line when suddenly, the machinery ground to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked directly to the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for about 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap near the bottom-right corner of the box.
Immediately, all machines in the assembly line came back to life.
The manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request of payment for services for the sum of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ridiculously high fee for less than five minutes work and then 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 main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for having invested years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog fully configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 site?)
Although experts often make complex things 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 internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything functions as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your 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 can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will get published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external services to your setup, content pointing back to your site will get automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your site will benefit from added exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be 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 site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site data with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, your information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, traffic tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and instantly fed to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users 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 some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social 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 sites and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary 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 social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you 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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays 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 to view the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed whenever new posts are 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 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WP Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of 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, securing your web sites is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you select 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 plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site 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 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 features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome 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 are making money online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
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 find 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 two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engine bots can read. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish web content on a regular basis to automatically drive more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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