Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is post great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing when you publish content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for any and every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an 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, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were running smoothly in the gizmo assembly factory when all of a sudden, all machines stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the board for about 3 minutes or less, the expert then produced a little hammer from his pocket and made a single tap about one cm from the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery returned to normal.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ridiculously high fee for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make complicated things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that everything functions as planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different components including your server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your webhosting account that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all 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 spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
External Sites And Accounts – Configuration
The concept behind adding external sites is that all content gets published from one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content linked back to your website gets automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to help 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 before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, the information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add your account code to all of your pages in WordPress using a plugin and feed data instantly to various other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data are set up, use this information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
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 technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own web 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 services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you 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
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify your update services list whenever a new post is 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 …
(Global Settings – 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 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 search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving how search engines find and index your website …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social plugins let you choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
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 layout and design of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Additional Sections Of WordPress For More Traffic
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. 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 site 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 can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Page
When online users type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is add web content on a consistent basis to attract more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take some web developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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