Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to automatically start generating web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically begin driving new visitors whenever you add content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive and businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you improve their performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All 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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything was going fine in the widget-making assembly line when things suddenly came to a halt.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny hammer from his pocket and made a gentle tap about 1 cm from the right side of the unit.
Immediately, the plant sprang back to life.
The floor manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning 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 demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site fully configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to get certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything works as envisioned, 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 so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your server, your site, and a number of external sites and online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how your website will handle 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 positive traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites and online services.
Integration With External Web Properties
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your setup, content pointing back to your website gets automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will then be given additional exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – 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 you with important information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, you can use this information to automate web 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 traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, traffic tracking code can be added to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and and fed to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of 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 web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
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 social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds 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 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services box whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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 content, 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
Your Permalink settings enable your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with 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, securing your web sites is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google and Bing find and index your website …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online 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 features to their site using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about the importance of having a legally compliant website, go here:
Categories And Post Tags
Categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. 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 results in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When online users type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add web content regularly to start generating web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals months to acquire.
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 addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress website and proven web marketing methods.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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