Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to automatically attract web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can get web traffic automatically when you start to add content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, you have an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going well in the widget assembly line when production suddenly stopped.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked directly to the control box. After staring at the electronic components for 2 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a very gentle tap near the bottom-left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request of payment for services rendered for the sum of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress blog set up and configured so all you ever had 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 this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your web server, your site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling 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 your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad 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 forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites or online services.
External Sites
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your configuration, content linking back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms. Your content and business will then receive increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to speed up the process 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 Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account and entering site data, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and automatically sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news 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 many different solutions you can add to your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 …
(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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read 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 most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping the list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: How To Change WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely safe from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress 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.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags and categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engine bots can read XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web 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 server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is add content regularly to generate more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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