Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post web content regularly to automatically attract more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to automatically begin driving visitors when you add web content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are looking for any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a 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 differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a 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 process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was moving along in the widget assembly line when all machinery suddenly ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, immediately walked towards the main control box. After staring at the schematics for 3 minutes or less, the expert then produced a little hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap near the bottom-right side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and started working again.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While many experts often make complicated things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will function how you have planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of various different components including your server, your website, and various external sites and online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simple diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, 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, the next step is to configure a number of external sites and/or online services.
Third-Party Accounts
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your traffic system, content pointing back to your website will be automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will then receive exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some of the external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site details are set up, use this information with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. 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 efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to various other applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details have been set up, use this information to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 automated traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your 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 accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
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 social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate 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 web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described 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 specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(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 and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify all the update services you have listed when new posts are 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 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 blogs 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, see this tutorial: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely safe from being attacked.
(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.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google and Bing find, crawl and index your web pages …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins let you specify 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 plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Areas
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to ensure that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engines can read an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is publish great content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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