Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to start generating traffic is post fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, 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 things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically start bringing new traffic simply by posting web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are researching any advantage available to improve their performance online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
The Configuration Stage Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was going well in the widget assembly line when everything ground to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked immediately to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for what seemed like about 3 minutes or less, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap near the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your site configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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 difficult things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part 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 integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Accounts
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your configuration, content linked back to your site will get automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your website will be given added exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, you can use your information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress via a plugin and send data automatically to various other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data are set up, use this information to automate web 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 website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. 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 Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology 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.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different platforms you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked 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 site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you 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 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
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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read 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 enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress 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 sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Changing WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from cyberattacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) include 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 have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the traffic 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 traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with government regulations.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
Tags & Categories
Categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engine bots can read XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your site just from 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.
Your 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be greeted with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start driving web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take many web professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"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
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