Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to automatically bring more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can begin getting new traffic automatically just by adding content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are looking for every advantage available to improve their results and performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional 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 extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were running smoothly in the gizmo-making factory when everything ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately headed to the control box. After staring silently at the box for less than 2 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer from his shirt pocket and made a gentle tap near the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, the plant came back to life.
The manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other web 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often quite simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get specific outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that everything functions how you have planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your web server, your web site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simple flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your hosting account that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, 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 will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites and online solutions.
Integration With External Solutions
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content is published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your setup, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will then be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site data, use the account information with 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, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 these features into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(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 various social accounts 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 get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – 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 or your webmaster have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, 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 check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify the list of update services when a new post is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of 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 securing your website or blog.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and 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 visitors to easily share your content with friends and members of their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site here:
Categories And Post Tags
WordPress post tags and post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for 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 from an XML sitemap (which plugins 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 – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be presented with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically begin bringing traffic is publish content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed 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 article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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