Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content regularly to generate traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin to publish web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are exploring any and every advantage they can to improve their results and performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was moving along in the widget plant when the machinery suddenly came to a halt.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, immediately went towards the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a single tap near the top-right side of the unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The plant manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site fully set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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?)
While many experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also 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 you need to set up to get desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure everything will work exactly as you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your site, and various external sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
Configuring External Services
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will be published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically 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 network, content linking back to your site will get automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site data with Google have been set up, you can use the account information with traffic settings in WordPress 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 behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, visitor tracking data can be integrated with WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details are set up, the account details 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 offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
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 these features into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your traffic system. 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 web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into 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 one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(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 or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
WP Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is immune from a cyber-attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social features to your site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Themes
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 design and layout elements of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Configuration Features For Your WordPress Site
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Tags & Categories
Post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engine bots can read. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from 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.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with a 404 page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post great content on a consistent basis to bring more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some web developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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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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