Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One 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 generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin attracting new traffic is publish fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, 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 look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by publishing content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth looking into any and every advantage that can help you get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over the competition. An expertly configured website gives you a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is running smoothly in the widget manufacturing plant when the machinery suddenly stops.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks directly to the main control box. After staring at the electronic components for 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap about three and half cm from the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything begins working once again.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering such 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 on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get certain results
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things function as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your web server, your website, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
3rd-Party Solutions
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your network, content pointing back to your site is automatically fed to these platforms. Your business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google are set up, your information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, visitor tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress using plugins and and fed to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic 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 get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts before you can integrate these with 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 big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose 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).
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your site …
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 RebelMouse page.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
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 points.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below 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 configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors 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 in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to notify the list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
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 website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their friends and members of their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins let you choose which 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 likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Aspects For Your WordPress Site
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted 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 do any kind of business online, you need to make sure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
For a detailed article on the importance of having a compliant website, refer to this article:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags & post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Process.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engine bots can understand an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your pages 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.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When online users type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is add content regularly to bring traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site 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 you can. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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