Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and 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, all you have to do is post new content on a consistent basis to begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin to publish new content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are looking for every advantage they believe will get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here’s a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was running smoothly in the gizmo assembly line when all of a sudden, things just stopped.
No one could figure out what was wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked directly to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his shirt pocket and made a very gentle tap about one inch from the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything inside the plant returned once again to normal.
The manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves 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 accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that things will function as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage 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 a solution, clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your server, your WP site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring 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 errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Configuring External Sites
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your configuration, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content will then be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help speed up the 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmaster Tools account and site data have been set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, account code can be added to all pages in WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account, you can use your information to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of 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 web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
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 specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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
***
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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view 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 in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is immune from being hacked.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and 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+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose which social 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 shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
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 design and layout of your site, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Features
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Tags And Categories
WordPress tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your website 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. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is code that only search engines can read. Although 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 results in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish great content on a regular basis to automatically bring web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise required to perform this process can take some website developers a long time 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 Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
Would You Like To Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"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)
***