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 traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is add new content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can begin getting traffic automatically as you begin adding fresh content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are looking for any and every advantage available to improve their performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a significant 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 installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here’s a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was moving along in the gizmo-making assembly line when the machines suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for about 3 minutes or less, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a single tap about two inches from the top-left corner of the box.
Immediately, everything began working as before.
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 later, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time delivering such 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines 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 the right to get paid fairly for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress web site set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 many experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring site settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and services.
External Web Properties And Solutions – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external sites to your system, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will then receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account is set up, your information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress 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 activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site details has been entered, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins and send data automatically to various other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, you can use this information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your 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 bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can configure these as part of 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site 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 account.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your 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 third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content 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 site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, 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 most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is guaranteed immunity from being targeted.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with friends and members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins let you choose 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 social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP 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 site, many themes also provide options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Additional Features Of WordPress To Configure For Improved Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags and post categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your web site 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 Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When online visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web 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 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 admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish new content on a regular basis to begin bringing new web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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