Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add web content regularly to bring more traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to bring visitors automatically just by regularly adding content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and businesses are exploring any and every advantage they believe will help them increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and a significant advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
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 is a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was going well in the widget-making workshop when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately headed towards the control box. After staring at the schematics for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap near the left side of the box.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for less than five minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn 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?)
Although experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to get certain results
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that processes will run the way you have envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling 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 welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
Configuring External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content linking back to your site gets automatically syndicated to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you inform 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 details, your account information can be used with web traffic-related 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 performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, visitor tracking code can be added to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details with Bing have been set up, you can use this information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking 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 attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping the list of update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 blogs 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress 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, securing your sites is something you simply cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
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 design and layout aspects of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas 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 traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with 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 make money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
Categories & Tags
Categories and post tags help search engines better classify and index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engines can understand XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is post great content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process can take many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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