Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically generate traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically get visitors when you post new content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are researching any advantage they believe will improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything is moving along in the gizmo-making workshop when all of a sudden, things just stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, immediately heads towards the main control box. After staring silently at the board for less than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool belt and makes a single tap about 3 cm from the top-right edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and comes back to life.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the factory manager calls the expert. Why have they had been charged such a ridiculously high fee for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring site settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything will work as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of a number of different parts such as your web server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how your site 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 beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and online services.
Configuring External Services
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content gets published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your network, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content receives increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration process 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, use the account information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, your account data can be integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and and fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details have been set up, this information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 this into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts 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 bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Section)
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 configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in 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 summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services box whenever new posts are 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 Screen)
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Changing WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the 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 securing your website.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easier for search engines to index …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find 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 GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Other Sections
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, 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 are making money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website, go here:
Post Tags & Categories
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but 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 contains code that only search engines can understand. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When online visitors enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically drive more traffic is publish new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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