Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic 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 website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to start driving traffic is publish great content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 site was built with 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 blueprint. We explain why an expertly configured site is different. You will also understand what type of work is required to make sure that when all is set up and configured, visitors will automatically start flowing just by adding content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth looking into every opportunity you can to improve your own performance and results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, you have an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes 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 a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was running smoothly in the widget assembly plant when the machinery suddenly ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a very gentle tap near the top-left side of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be automatically 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of different parts such as your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites and/or online solutions.
Integration With External Accounts
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content will be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external services to your setup, content pointing back to your website will get automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site will then receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some of these sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account, use the account information with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic monitoring information can be integrated with WordPress using a plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use this information to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, 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 this into your traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts before you can 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 attract new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different platforms that can be added to your own web 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.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your 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, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(You can 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 visitors will see your content 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 a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify various update services when a new post gets 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 unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
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 content, 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 Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their friends and members of their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Features – Configuration
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 design and layout of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
WordPress post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from 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 visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to begin bringing web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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