Welcome to Part 3 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.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to attract new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at 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 site, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured site, and just what kind of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing when you begin adding content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive and businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were going fine in the gizmo-making factory when all machinery suddenly came to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and, without uttering a word, headed out immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 2 minutes, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a gentle tap about 1 cm from the bottom-left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other 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 the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve certain results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will work to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a button, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the steps 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 phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
Third-Party Accounts
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your configuration, content linked back to your site will get automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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 Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google, your account details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress 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 behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and send data automatically to various other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data with Bing have been set up, you can use the information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, 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 business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can post your content to many social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
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 an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different platforms you can add to your traffic system. Please 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 external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – 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 specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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
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 have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, 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 ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely immune from cyberattacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can 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, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site, see this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(Post categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can understand. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is post web content on a consistent basis to begin bringing more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many web developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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