Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically drive more traffic is post fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured website. You will also learn how much work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is fully set up and configured, you can bring visitors automatically just by posting content consistently to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are exploring any and every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured website gives your business an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was humming along in the gizmo assembly workshop when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked directly to the main control box. After staring at the schematics for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a very gentle tap about one inch from the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The plant 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 request of payment for services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything will function as expected, etc.
(Driving web 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 and time-consuming. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many different parts such as your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server that affect how you will handle 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 beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like 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 hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and services.
External Accounts
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content will get published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external platforms to your traffic network, content linked back to your site will get automatically fed to these platforms. Your website will then be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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 Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you notify 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.
Once your account is with Google are set up, you can use your details with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, traffic monitoring code can be added to WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, use your account information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 attract new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(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 and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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
***
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 traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to ping various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief 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 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, 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 blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress 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 your website’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. 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 post content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share 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 site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Features Of WordPress To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any type of business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website complies with government regulations.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
For a detailed article about why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, see this article:
Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with an error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish fresh content consistently to attract new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
***