Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is post new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. We will help you understand why an expertly configured site is different than a professionally configured one, and how much work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is set up and fully configured, traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you publish web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are researching any and every advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were running smoothly in the gizmo-making assembly line when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, immediately walked to the control box. After staring silently at the board for 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap about one inch from the right-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, everything sprang to life once more.
The manager was greatly 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 service bill for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your web site fully configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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 website?)
While experts often make complex 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 some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure things will function as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, 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 your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and/or online services.
External Accounts
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your network, content linked back to your website will get automatically posted to these platforms. Your website will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account has been set up, you can use this information 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 site’s results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, tracking data can be integrated with WordPress via plugins used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, you can use your details with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
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 automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with 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 attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site 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 social feed.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
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 site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(WordPress lets you 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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content 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 text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from a partial feed, 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.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to ping your list of 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 …
(WordPress Settings – 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 articles, 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and bots.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to choose 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 shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your site is compliant with all legal requirements.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Post categories and post tags help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: 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 mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can understand. Although Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically begin bringing new traffic is post fresh content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website developers 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 section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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