WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Part 3 (Configuration)

This is part 3 of a 5-part series on how to create an automated traffic generation system for your WordPress site. In this tutorial, you will learn how to configure the essential settings of the WordPress automated traffic system.

Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 3 - How To Turn Your WordPress Website Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.

In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …

With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically drive web traffic is post great content regularly!

(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is publish great content regularly!)

In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start 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 existing website was built with WordPress.

How to set up a WordPress website on your domain

(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)

In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will understand why an expertly configured site is different from a professionally configured website, and what type of work is required to ensure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can automatically start attracting visitors whenever you add fresh content to your site.

WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase

The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any opportunity they can to improve their results online.

The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.

The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured

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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.

Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:

An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!

A professional website gives you a professional web presence, but an expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation.

(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)

Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.

Let me illustrate this point with a joke.

A Semi-True Story …

All was going just fine in the widget assembly line when all of a sudden, everything just stopped.

As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.

Soon afterward, the expert arrived and walked immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a tiny hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap near the left corner of the box.

Immediately, everything in the factory floor sprang to life once again.

The manager was filled with joy 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 request for payment of $5,000.

The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.

The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:

invoice notice

The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.

In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a very serious crisis?

Similarly, if you could have your blog set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?

How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?

(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)

While the solution to many problems often seems quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.

Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:

  • Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
  • Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to get specific results
  • Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will function exactly as you have envisioned, etc.

Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise

(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)

Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.

Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and services …

The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings

(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)

If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …

A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase

(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)

Let’s take a look at these steps.

Your Web Server

We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …

During the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic

(In 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 site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.

This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …

Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?

(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)

After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure various external sites and services.

External Accounts

The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.

Integration With External Solutions

After incorporating these external services into your network, content linked back to your website is automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.

External Accounts

Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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 before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmasters - create a Google-friendly site

(Google Webmasters)

Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.

After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmasters, use the details with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.

Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add your account information to all of your pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to many other online applications and web properties.

Bing Data And Tools

Bing Data And Tools

(Bing Webmaster Tools)

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.

WordPress.com

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 plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.

WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.

Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts

Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site

(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)

You will need to have already set up your social accounts in order to 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 traffic to your site.

Set up profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.

Social Media Pages

There are loads of social sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail further below and in the Automation phase).

There are lots of social sites you can post your content to.

(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)

Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.

There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve 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 your WordPress site feed …

RebelMouse

RebelMouse

(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)

RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.

Useful Tip

There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.

Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.

WordPress Traffic 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 Settings

Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …

WordPress admin menu - Settings

(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)

General Settings

Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …

Settings Menu - General Settings

(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)

Writing

The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …

WordPress Settings - Writing Settings Area

(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)

As stated in the Update Services section,

When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …

Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field

By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …

Update Services

(Update Services)

You can notify dozens of update services automatically …

You can notify dozens of update services automatically!

(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)

Useful Info

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 to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users 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 main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.

Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping your update services list when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …

Global Settings - Reading Settings

(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)

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 blogs 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 …

WordPress Settings - Discussion Settings

(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)

Permalink Settings

Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …

Global Settings - Permalink Settings Section

(Global Settings – Permalinks)

The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …

Configuring search-friendly URLS

(Configuring permalinks)

For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO

WP Plugin Settings

WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.

Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site

Security Plugins – Blog Defender

Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web site.

WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)

Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.

More info:

SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO

WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …

Yoast SEO - WP Plugin

(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)

A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.

Social Sharing Plugins

Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.

You can add social features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins

(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)

There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.

Many social plugins allow you to select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by sharing your page.

Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes

As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.

For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …

Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results

(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)

With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …

Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button

(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)

WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Aspects To Consider

Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.

This includes the following:

Website Legal Pages

Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.

If you do business online, you need to make sure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.

Is Your Site Compliant?(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)

If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:

Categories & Post Tags

Categories & tags help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.

WordPress post categories help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.

(WordPress post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)

As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.

In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.

Add A Site Map

A visitor site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …

(Site Map - great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)

(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)

Important Info

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, while an XML sitemap is code that only search engine bots can interpret. 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 results in increased traffic.

Your 404 Page Not Found

When online users type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they are presented with an error – page not found message …

Default WordPress 404 Page

(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)

A 404 Error Page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …

Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.

(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)

Practical Tip

Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary

Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is add web content on a regular basis to automatically drive more web traffic.

The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …

Traffic System - Configuration Phase Checklist

(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)

Useful Info

The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers 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 series.

This is the end of Section 3

To continue reading this article, click here:

Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 3 - A Complete Guide To Driving More Website Traffic For Your Business Automatically

Useful Info

This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing strategies.

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