Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add fresh content regularly to automatically generate more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 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. We will explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different. You will also understand how much work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, you can automatically begin attracting new visitors just by adding web content regularly to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive, it’s worth exploring any opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a 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’s one way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was running smoothly in the widget workshop when things suddenly ceased working.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went directly to the control box. After staring silently at the board for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a very gentle tap about 2 cm from the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything started working once more.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them 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 arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new traffic 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 to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 site?)
Although experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires 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 third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure everything will work to plan, etc.
(Driving web 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 difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your traffic system, content linking back to your website will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the external sites will need to be 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 site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site details, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, traffic monitoring code can be added to all web pages in WordPress via plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, use the information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed 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 build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts 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 get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many 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 select those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various solutions that can be added to your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
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 key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping your list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is guaranteed immunity from cyberattacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Features To Configure
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.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and 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 Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
Categories & post tags help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a logical map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can read. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found 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 Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically drive more web traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website 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 you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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