Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and 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 is add fresh content on a regular basis to start attracting web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to get traffic automatically whenever you add new content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting ever more competitive, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, you have a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going well in the widget plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and walked immediately to the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a very gentle tap about two cm from the top-right side of the box.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The plant manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 site?)
While many experts often make complicated situations and problems 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 basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get specific results
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure everything will work as planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
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 site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
3rd-Party Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content is published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your setup, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content will receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use the details with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, your account data can be integrated with WordPress via plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your 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 accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Set up profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely safe from being targeted.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to specify 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 shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A 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 discover more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your 404 Error Page
When online visitors enter the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to start driving traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this process can take some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively with a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing strategies.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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