Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content on a consistent basis to drive traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing whenever you post web content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and are looking for every opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was moving along in the widget assembly line when all of a sudden, the machines ground to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the box for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about 3 inches from the left-hand edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything sprang to life once again.
The 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 an invoice for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems may seem quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring site settings for the client. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will work how you have envisioned, 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 and time-consuming. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web-hosting account that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and/or online services.
Integration With External Accounts
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external platforms to your traffic system, content linked back to your site gets automatically published on these platforms. Your content will receive exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some third-party sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to speed up the configuration 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’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account has been with Google are set up, the details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications 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 traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress via a plugin and send data automatically to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing are set up, the details can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. 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 an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
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 RebelMouse website.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
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 intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users 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 site to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services section whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WP Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is guaranteed immunity from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their social communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both 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 are making money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags & categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from 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 results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(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 plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to bring traffic is publish 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 elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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