Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to bring more traffic is add web content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to start 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 existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to attract new visitors automatically just by posting fresh content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and businesses are looking for every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
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 developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here is a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was going just fine in the widget assembly line when production suddenly came to a halt.
No one could figure out what is wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring at the wiring board for what seemed like 5 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his pocket and made a gentle tap about one cm from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, all the machinery sprang to life.
The manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately 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?)
While many experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for the client. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to achieve certain results
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure processes will run to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of external sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and 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 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and online services.
Configuring External Services
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your setup, content linking back to your site will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will receive exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help save time 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 site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console – 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 site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account has been set up, you can use this information to automate 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, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, you can add tracking information to WordPress via a plugin and feed data automatically to various other applications and reporting tools.
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 with Bing have been set up, use your information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at 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 And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social 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 drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary 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 an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
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 intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 have an 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 readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you select which social 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 followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the components 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 visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will index your site just using 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.
404 Page Not Found – Another Source Of Traffic!
When online visitors enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to automatically begin attracting more web traffic is add web content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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