Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to attract new web traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured website, and how much work is required to make sure that when all is fully configured, you will attract visitors automatically simply by regularly publishing fresh content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any advantage that can help you increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
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 builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is humming along in the gizmo-making factory when production suddenly stops.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately goes to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for about 5 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his tool box and makes a single tap near the top-right edge of the box.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services rendered totalling $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the manager calls the expert. Why were they charged so much for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complicated things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that everything works to plan, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts including your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
3rd-Party Web Properties
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your configuration, content linked back to your website is automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external web properties and online services will need to be set up before configuring your site to help 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 Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, you can use your details with traffic 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 website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account is set up, use the details with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can 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 drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – 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 or your webmaster have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – 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
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 content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
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 sites 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
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 website or blog is safe from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content more indexable …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their own friends and networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social 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 likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
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, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both 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 business online, it’s important that your website complies with all government regulations.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(Categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will index your pages just from 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they will typically be presented with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically start attracting traffic is add great content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals 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 addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business using 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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