Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to bring more traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is fully set up and configured, you can automatically drive new visitors when you add new content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about any and every opportunity you can to improve your own results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. For businesses, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is moving along in the gizmo-making plant when suddenly, everything grounds to a halt.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately heads to the main control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the top-left side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returns once more to normal.
The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube 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 complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to get certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything works to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your web server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious 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 then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Configuring External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets syndicated automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content linking back to your site gets automatically posted to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will benefit from increased exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and online services will need to be set up before configuring your settings to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, use the account information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add visitor tracking information to WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed 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 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 these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
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 RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be added to your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan 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 settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(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 have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content 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 main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping the update services list when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
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 blog is completely safe from being targeted.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google find and index your website …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify 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+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social share plugins let you select 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 plugins even allow you to protect content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
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 layout and design of your website, some themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections For More Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories And Post Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can understand an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is publish new content on a consistent basis to automatically bring more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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