Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add web content on a consistent basis to start attracting traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. The focus of this section is to help you understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different from a professionally configured one. You will also learn what type of work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, you can automatically begin attracting traffic when you publish new content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any advantage that can help you improve your own performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their 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 website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is going well in the gizmo manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things stop.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads out immediately to the main control box. After staring at the electronic components for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap about one cm from the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Furious, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website set up so all you have 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 you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems can seem ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure processes will run how you would like, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your website, and a number of external sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and online solutions.
External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your network, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your website will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 before configuring your settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use your details with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to various other online applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with 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 for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great 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 these features into your traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking 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 drive new traffic to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those 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 Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated 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 web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – 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 or your webmaster have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services 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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing 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 site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – 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 allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from a cyberattack.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
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 design and layout of your website, some themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Areas
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad 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 any type of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Tags & categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your website 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 things. Although Google can index your pages 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 results in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Page
When online visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post great content on a consistent basis to automatically bring web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some web developers 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 you can. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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