Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to start generating new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn why an expertly configured site is different from a professionally configured one, and what kind of work is required to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can automatically bring new visitors whenever you publish web content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic 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 exploring any and every advantage they believe will improve their results and performance online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, you have a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
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.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was running smoothly in the gizmo assembly factory when everything suddenly just stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly afterwards and immediately headed towards the main control box. After staring silently at the box for 5 minutes or less, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the right side of the box.
Immediately, everything inside the workshop sprang to life once more.
The manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request of payment for services for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other web 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 site?)
Although the solution to many problems is often quite easy 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 a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get desired results
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that things will function as envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your web site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your 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 business may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage 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 includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure various external sites and/or online solutions.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content will get posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your system, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content will then receive exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to 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 site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site data are set up, you can use this information to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, tracking data can be integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. 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 can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
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 areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated 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 settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to ping your list of update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online 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 features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social features to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some 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 improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also give you options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Additional Areas Of WordPress For Better Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online, you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories and post tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your site 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 WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide visitors with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps contain code that only search engines can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(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 web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish new content consistently to attract new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some web professionals a long time 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 series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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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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