Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is add new content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain what makes an expertly configured site different from a professionally configured one, and just what kind of work needs to be done to ensure that when all is fully configured, traffic will automatically start flowing when you add content to your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming ever more competitive worldwide, it’s worth looking into every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s an amusing story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things are going well in the widget factory when everything suddenly ceases working.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, goes directly to the main control box. After staring at the schematics for 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his tool belt and makes a very gentle tap about one cm from the left-hand edge of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line springs back to life.
The 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 manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Bordering on outrage, the manager dials the expert. Why have they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that things function to plan, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your server, your site, and various external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking 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 configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Accounts
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically fed to these platforms. Your content will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help 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 Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google Search Console, use the information with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and send data instantly to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account has been set up, you can use the information 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 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, 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 web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 RebelMouse social feed.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site 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.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins allow you to specify which social 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 ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Other Features To Configure
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad 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 make money online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog, refer to this article:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags & categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will 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 results in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error 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 dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is post new content consistently to automatically start generating new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring 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 some website developers months to acquire.
Once you have 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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