Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post fresh content regularly to start generating more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can attract web traffic automatically when you publish web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for any advantage they can that can help you improve their results and performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured website gives you a flying start and a significant competitive advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything is running smoothly in the gizmo plant when things come to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrives within 15 minutes and, without uttering a word, heads out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a single tap about 2 inches from the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
With a sense of outrage, the factory manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Why had he charged them such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems is often quite simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring settings for clients. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure processes will work as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many different parts including your web hosting server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites or online services.
Integration With External Web Properties
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your setup, content pointing back to your website will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will benefit from increased exposure online, helping your business tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to 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 Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, your details can be used with 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 results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site data has been entered, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress using plugins and send data instantly to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details, the account information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts 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 sites and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS 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.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to 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 page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
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 key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
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 intentionally configured your site settings to prevent 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
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable WordPress to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins – Configuration
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve 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 handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your web site is something you cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving the way search engines find and index your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom 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 site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
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 layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories & Post Tags
Post tags & post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find 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 things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are code that only search engines can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they will normally be greeted with an error page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is add fresh content on a regular basis to begin attracting web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals months 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 tutorial series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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