Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
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 automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to begin bringing traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to automatically start bringing new traffic just by consistently posting content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting ever more competitive, it’s worth looking into every advantage that can help you increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going just fine in the gizmo factory when things ground to a sudden halt.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and walked immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool box and made a gentle tap near the top-left side of the box.
Immediately, all the machinery started working once more.
The floor manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time delivering a 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 in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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 just installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve certain results
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure processes will run to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
External Services
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your traffic system, content pointing back to your site will be automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been with Google are set up, you can use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings 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 results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress via plugins and send data automatically to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, use the account information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress 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 option if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to 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 bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have pages 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 create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described 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 purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can 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 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 influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box 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 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely safe from being targeted.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with members of their online communities can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which 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 social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Other Important Aspects To Consider
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with all laws and regulations.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog, refer to this article:
Post Categories And Post Tags
Post tags & post categories help search engines classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your website 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 not the same thing. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting more traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly 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 the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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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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