Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your 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 site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to bring more web traffic is post great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by consistently posting new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are looking for any advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the gizmo manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, the machines stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly afterward and, without uttering a word, walked immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for what seemed like 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a tiny little hammer and made a gentle tap near the bottom-left corner of the box.
Immediately, the plant sprang back to life.
The plant manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request for payment of services rendered totalling $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog fully set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, 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 some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve certain results
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that things will work as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different parts including your web hosting server, your site, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web-hosting account that affect how you will handle 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 beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and/or online services.
3rd-Party Sites Integration
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your configuration, content linking back to your website will be automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will benefit from exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the configuration 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site details has been entered, traffic monitoring code can be added to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple plugin used with 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. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, your account information can be used to automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking 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 get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads 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 the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described 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 prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(You can 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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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 here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly ping the list of update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
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. 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 afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by sharing 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, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Other Important Aspects To Consider
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle 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 (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog here:
Post Categories And Post Tags
Categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover 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 different things. HTML site maps provide users with a logical map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps contain code that only search engines can read. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically generate more web traffic is post new content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals months 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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