Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically generate more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new traffic will automatically start flowing when you start publishing new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting so much more competitive, it’s worth looking into every opportunity you can to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured website gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you 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 labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was running smoothly in the widget manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things stopped.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, headed immediately towards the control box. After staring at the schematics for what seemed like 3 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap about 1 inch from the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything started working as before.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than five minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be immediately 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 site?)
Although many experts often make difficult solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that things will work as planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts including your server, your web site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your hosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites or online services.
External Web Properties & Services – Configuration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your system, content linked back to your site will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will then receive additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to 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 Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you inform 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 and entering site data with Google Search Console, this information 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 website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add tracking information to WordPress using plugins and feed data instantly to various other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various 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 web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(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 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking 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 sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(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 intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
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 …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including 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 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, securing your websites is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO 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 and Bing to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social share plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Categories & Post Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, 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.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for 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 thing. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a visual map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps contain code that only search bots can read. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically start driving traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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