Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 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 website, all you have to do to automatically start generating traffic is publish new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you why an expertly configured site is different from a professionally configured one, and what type of work is required to ensure that when everything is set up and configured, you can automatically attract new traffic just by regularly publishing content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any and every advantage they believe will help them improve their performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going well in the widget assembly workshop when everything comes to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and immediately walks towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 2 inches from the bottom-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The floor manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
Angry and confused, the factory manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WP site, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple flowchart showing the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Accounts
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your configuration, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically posted to these platforms. Your site will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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 WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important data, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google Search Console are set up, the 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 traffic results, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, 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 have been set up, traffic monitoring information can be added to all of your pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been with Bing have been set up, your information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online 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 this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up in order to integrate these with 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress 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 WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section …
(You can 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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in 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 a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, see this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is guaranteed immunity from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by sharing your page.
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, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Features For WordPress Traffic
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can read. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(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 plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add web content regularly to start attracting 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 web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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