Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will show you what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured website, and what kind of work is required to ensure that when all is fully configured, you will get traffic automatically simply by consistently posting web content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are exploring any and every advantage they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
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 builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you 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 tool!)
Not only are more steps required 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 a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is humming along in the gizmo manufacturing plant when everything grinds to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and immediately goes towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny hammer and makes a single tap about 2 cm from the right corner of the box.
Immediately, the plant springs back to life.
The floor manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Bewildered, the factory manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires 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 you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things will work as planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different parts such as your web server, your WP site, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome 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 both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
Third-Party Sites
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all content will get published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your setup, content linking back to your website gets automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external web properties and online services 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site data have been set up, you can use your details to integrate and automate traffic-related settings 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 performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, account data can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin and instantly sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account, the account information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained 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 option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
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 this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify your list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this tutorial: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with 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, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your websites.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines to find, classify and index …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom 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.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your site, many themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Categories & Post Tags
Categories & post tags help search engines classify and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help search engines better classify and index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are code that only search engines can interpret. Although Google will 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 results in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to generate traffic is post content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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