Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
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 site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add great content regularly to bring more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. The focus of this section is to help you understand what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured site. You will also understand just what kind of work needs to be done to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, you will attract new traffic automatically when you begin posting content regularly to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are researching any advantage they can to improve their performance and results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to understand the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was running smoothly in the gizmo plant when everything suddenly stopped working.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, immediately headed to the control box. After staring at the box for 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his shirt pocket and made a very gentle tap near the left edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and sprang to life once more.
The plant manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than five 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 the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get specific results
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that things will function as expected, etc.
(Generating 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 challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your web site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server 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 unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure various external sites and services.
Third-Party Accounts Integration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content is published from a central location (your site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external sites to your configuration, content pointing back to your site will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to various other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, the account details can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
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 explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up 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 pages and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
Configuring WordPress
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(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 …
(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 on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays 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 get the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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 content, 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
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WP Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to specify 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 likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Important Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle 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 do business online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with all laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins 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.
404 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When online users enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically begin attracting more web traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress website and proven web marketing methods.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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