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 platform.
In Part 1 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 blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained 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 existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically bring new traffic when you publish web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about every opportunity you can to improve your results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured website gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was going according to schedule in the widget-making workshop when everything ground to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walked towards the control box. After staring at the electronic components for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny hammer and made a single tap about 1 cm from the right-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The plant manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog fully configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that things work as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts including your web hosting server, your WP site, and various external sites …
(The configuration phase 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 something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and online services.
Integration With External Sites
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content pointing back to your site is automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your 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 site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site data with Google are set up, use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, traffic tracking information can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and and fed to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use your account information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can 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 get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 website.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in 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 or your webmaster have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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
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 shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping various 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 unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your web site.
(WordPress 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 botnets.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Other Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with all laws and regulations.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
WordPress Post Tags And Categories
Tags & post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.
(Categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of 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 different things. Although search engines like Google can 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can 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 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post great content consistently to automatically start generating new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform this process can take many website developers a long time 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 covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
Subscribe To WPCompendium.org And Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published!
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
***