Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was 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 stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing simply by posting new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive and businesses are researching any and every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
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 an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo assembly line when everything suddenly stops.
As no one can figure out what is wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, immediately goes towards the main control box. After staring at the box for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a single tap about one cm from the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The floor manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Angrily, the manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately 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 site?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for a client. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything functions to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web server, your website, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
Third-Party Accounts Integration
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content will then be given exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to help 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)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site data are set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications 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 results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress via a plugin and send data instantly to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use this information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up 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 pages and get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
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 list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: How To Change WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of 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, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your website.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines to index …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their friends and networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, you need to make sure that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
Tags and post categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although 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 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error 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 recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers 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 covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website and proven web marketing methods.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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