Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin attracting new traffic is publish content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different than a professionally configured website, and what kind of work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing whenever you add fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are looking for any and every advantage they can to improve their results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a significant advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Phase 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 its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s an amusing little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going fine in the gizmo assembly plant when all of a sudden, the machinery comes to a complete stop.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, goes directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy little hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap about one cm from the right-hand side of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery in the plant comes back to life.
The manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering 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 the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that everything works as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts including your web server, your website or blog, and various external sites and online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your site will handle 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 welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
Third-Party Accounts
The concept behind adding external sites is that all content is posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically published on these platforms. Your website will then be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your 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 before configuring your site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account, the information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, traffic monitoring information can be added to WordPress using plugins and instantly sent to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site data with Bing have been set up, the details can be used with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, 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 this into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts in order to 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 accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
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.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services section
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified 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 your content gets seen by readers 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 displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to ping all the update services you have listed 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 …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
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 Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Change WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling 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 blog invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to select which 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Additional WordPress Features
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both 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 are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site complies with all government regulations.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site, refer to this article:
Post Categories And Tags
Post tags and categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Page
When online users type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add content on a consistent basis to start driving web traffic organically.
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 …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take some web professionals a long time 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 addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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