Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin bringing more traffic is post new content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can get new traffic automatically just by adding web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are researching every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is running smoothly in the widget assembly line when suddenly, all machinery comes to a complete stop.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny hammer from his tool belt and makes a very gentle tap about 2 inches from the right side of the unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Why had he charged them such a ridiculously high fee 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 in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog fully set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things work as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different components including your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content will be published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically syndicated to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some of the third-party web properties and online services will need to be set up before configuring your site 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site details are set up, use the account information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, visitor tracking data can be integrated with WordPress using plugins used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use this information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional web 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
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 technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
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 configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(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 …
(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 web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content 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 content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or 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.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping the list of update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is guaranteed immunity from being hacked.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Don’t Forget These
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good 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 engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about the importance of having a legally compliant website, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Categories and post tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
HTML Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search bots can interpret. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to begin bringing traffic is publish great content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process can take some web professionals months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website and proven online marketing methods.
Want To Get Automatically Notified When New Tutorials Are Published? Then Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!
***
"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
***