Welcome to Part Three 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 described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content regularly to attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you why an expertly configured WordPress site is different from a professionally configured one, and just what kind of work is required to make sure that when everything is set up and fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing as you begin adding fresh content regularly on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring any and every advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things are going well in the widget-making plant when all of a sudden, everything grounds to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads straight towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for about 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap near the top-right corner of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and returns to normal.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Angrily, the manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and Twitter 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 driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure everything functions as expected, 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 technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your server, your site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites and/or online services.
External Accounts
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your configuration, content linking back to your website gets automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google Webmaster Tools have been set up, use this information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress using plugins and feed data instantly to various other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is with Bing are set up, the information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained 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 a number of useful 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 these features into your web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up 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 get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
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 RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be added to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an 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 feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global 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 articles, 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 Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is immune from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines to index …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing 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. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WP Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Features
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website, see this article:
Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 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 page can be set up on your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically attract web traffic is publish content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals months to learn.
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 covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively using a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing strategies.
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