Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
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 web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically generate more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to automatically attract web traffic as you start adding fresh content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any and every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here’s a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was going fine in the widget assembly workshop when all of a sudden, everything just stopped.
No one could figure out what has gone wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for less than 2 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a very gentle tap about three inches from the left-hand edge of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line came back to life.
The floor manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be automatically 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?)
Although experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that things work exactly as you want, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s 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 dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites.
External Accounts
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content will be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external services to your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will then receive additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Search Console account is set up, the account information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to WordPress using a simple plugin and feed data instantly to many other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up before you can 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 attract new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
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 social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated 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 text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify the update services list when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including 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 website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines 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 GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins allow you to choose which 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Additional Sections To Configure For Better Traffic Results
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Tags & Post Categories
Categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. HTML site maps are web pages that provide users with a visual map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can interpret. 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.
Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish content on a regular basis to attract more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process can take many website developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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