Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 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 website or blog, all you have to do to automatically drive more web traffic is post new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can drive new visitors automatically whenever you add web content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are researching every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the gizmo-making factory when everything ground to a sudden halt.
No one could figure out what has gone wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately headed towards the control box. After staring at the wiring board for what seemed like 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and returned once again to normal.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ridiculously high fee for less than five minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the machines stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website fully set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 website?)
While experts often make complex solutions 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 basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that everything will work as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web-hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned 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, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites or online services.
Integration With External Accounts
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your system, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website will then receive increased exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration process 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, use your information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add your account code to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to various other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, this information can be used to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various 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 the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you 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 website.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact 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 a partial feed, 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 enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easier for search engines to index …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website 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 Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Visitor Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google can index your pages just from 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.
Your 404 Error Page
When online visitors enter the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add content on a regular basis to automatically bring more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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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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