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.

WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 3 - How To Create An Automated TrafficGenerating Machine

Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.

In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …

With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to generate web traffic!

(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to automatically generate more web traffic!)

In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.

Where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain

(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)

In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by publishing content on your site.

WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration

The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge 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 can that can help you get better results online.

The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very start.

The Configuration Stage Is What Makes The Difference

There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.

Here is a simple way to describe the difference:

An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!

A professional site gives you a professional web presence, but an expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool.

(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)

Not only are more steps needed 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 a little story.

Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …

Everything is going fine in the gizmo plant when the machines suddenly comes to a complete stop.

As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.

The expert arrives within the hour and, without uttering a word, immediately walks towards the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for about 3 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the left side of the control unit.

Immediately, the plant begins working again.

The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.

A few days later, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.

Bewildered and confused, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.

The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:

Invoice - ExpertCo

The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.

In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to fix a costly problem?

Similarly, if you could have a site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other 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?

(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)

While the solution to many problems is often ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.

Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:

  • Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
  • Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
  • Which settings you need to configure to ensure that processes will run to plan, etc.

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

(Driving new 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 and complicated. It’s not just about installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.

Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites …

The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings

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

If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …

A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process

(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration process)

Let’s take a better look at these areas.

Your Server – Configuration

We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …

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

(During the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)

Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.

This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …

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

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

Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.

External Services

The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content gets published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.

External Services

Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.

External Web Properties And Services - Configuration

Some web properties and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.

For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:

Google Search Console

Google Webmaster Tools - create a Google-friendly website

(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)

Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.

Once your account and site data with Google Search Console are set up, you can use the account information with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

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

Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to many other online applications.

Bing Data And Tools

Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools

(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been set up, use your details with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com

(WordPress.com)

As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.

WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.

Social Media Pages

Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new visitors to your site

(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site)

You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 attract new visitors to your site.

Make sure you have pages set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.

Social Media And Social Bookmarking

There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).

There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to.

(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)

Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.

There are many new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.

For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your website …

RebelMouse

RebelMouse - Distribute your content to social networks

(RebelMouse)

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

Practical Tip

There are various sites and platforms you can add to your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration 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 of the important areas.

Global WordPress Settings

By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …

WordPress dashboard menu - Settings

(WordPress settings section)

General Settings

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

WordPress Settings - General Settings Screen

(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)

Writing Settings

The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …

Settings Menu - Writing Settings

(Settings Menu – 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 purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services section

By default, only one service is available …

Update Services - A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress

(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)

WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …

Notify dozens of update services automatically!

(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)

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

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 text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in 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 summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.

The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.

Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …

WordPress Settings - Reading Settings Section

(Global Settings – Reading Settings)

Discussion Settings

Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …

Global Settings - Discussion Settings

(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)

Permalink Settings

Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …

Settings Menu - Permalink Settings Section

(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)

Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …

Configuring permalinks

(Configuring permalinks)

If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO

WordPress – Plugins

The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.

Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples

Security Plugins – Blog Defender

Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you cannot ignore.

WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)

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

More information:

WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO

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

WP Plugin - Yoast SEO

(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)

A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

WordPress Social Plugins

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

WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins

(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)

You can easily add social sharing features to your website with WordPress plugins.

Most social plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.

Configuring WordPress Theme Settings

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

For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …

Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results

(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)

With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …

Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features

(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)

Other Configuration Features For WordPress Traffic

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

This includes:

Compliance Web Pages

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

If you make money online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.

Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)

We have created a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website here:

Post Categories & Tags

Post tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.

WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.

(Categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.)

As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stages.

When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, 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.

A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts

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 tools find more of your website content …

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

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

Tip

Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can index your pages 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 results in increased traffic.

Don’t Forget Your 404 Error Page

When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …

Default WordPress 404 Page

(Default WordPress 404 Page)

Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …

Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.

(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)

Practical Tip

Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.

WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary

Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is publish new content on a consistent basis to start attracting traffic organically.

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

Traffic System - Configuration Phase Checklist

(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)

Info

The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some website developers months to acquire.

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 covered in the next article in our series.

This is the end of Part Three

To keep reading, click on the link below:

WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 3 - A Complete Guide To Getting More Web Traffic Automatically With WordPress

Useful Information

This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.

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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum

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