Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically bring more traffic is publish content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically bring visitors when you begin adding content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage available to improve your results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
Configuration Is 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 an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is moving along in the gizmo-making assembly line when the machines suddenly comes to a complete stop.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, immediately walks to the main control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a gentle tap near the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The plant manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
Angry and confused, the manager picks up the phone and dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to make sure processes will run as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your web hosting server, your website, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites.
Integration With External Accounts
The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and site will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to speed up the process 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, use the details to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress via a plugin and send data automatically to other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, use this information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning 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 this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic 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.
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.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different platforms you can add to your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds 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 get the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services box whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, go here:
Post Categories & Post Tags
WordPress tags & categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel 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 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting new web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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