Welcome to Part Three of our Website 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 article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to drive more web traffic is publish new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically attract web traffic simply by adding web content on a regular basis to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are researching every advantage they believe will help them improve their results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
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 its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things are going according to schedule in the widget-making assembly line when everything comes to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert goes directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for less than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap near the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line returns to normal.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog fully set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other web 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 website?)
While many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to get certain results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure things function exactly as you have planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your site, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and/or online services.
Third-Party Web Properties
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your setup, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings 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 Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account has been set up, the account information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. 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, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add tracking code to WordPress via plugins and send data automatically to other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can integrate these with 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 sites and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
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 page.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated 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 server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
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 key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services 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 notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post 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
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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify the update services list whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
WordPress 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. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines to index …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, some themes also provide options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, 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 provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engines can understand. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using 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 can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add fresh content consistently to attract more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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