Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 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 on a consistent basis to attract web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin bringing web traffic when you begin to post content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are exploring every advantage they can to improve their results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. For business owners, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with an amusing story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is going just fine in the widget-making workshop when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads out directly to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for about 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his tool box and makes a very gentle tap near the left edge of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line begins working as before.
The plant manager is relieved 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 amount of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning 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 years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog set up and 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 driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems is often ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things function the way you have envisioned, 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. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts such as your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring 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?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Web Properties & Solutions – Configuration
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically posted to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account has been set up, use your account information with traffic settings and notifications 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 performance, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via a plugin and send data automatically to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) 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 a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up in order to configure these as part of 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with and post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, 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 a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external 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 ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
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 discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 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 have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users 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 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.
The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type 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 website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress 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 features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to 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 set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure For Better Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about the importance of having a compliant website, go here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
WordPress tags & categories help search engines better organize and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your web site 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 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 web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide users with a an understandable 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 will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to start attracting web traffic is add new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have 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 series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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