Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add content on a consistent basis to begin attracting web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin bringing new visitors whenever you publish web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are researching any and every advantage they believe will help them improve their results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their website 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 a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going just fine in the widget assembly workshop when all of a sudden, everything grounds to a stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks directly to the main control box. After staring at the board for less than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny hammer from his tool belt and makes a single tap about two cm from the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery springs to life again.
The floor manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
Angry and bordering on a sense of outrage, the factory manager dials the expert. Why were they charged so much for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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 website?)
While experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that things will function to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your site, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website 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 simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and/or online services.
Configuring External Services
The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your setup, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to save time 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 Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account, you can use this information to automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, your account information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up 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 sites and bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – 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 chosen to discourage 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, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can 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 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 summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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 articles, 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 Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is immune from a cyber-attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website 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 social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users 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 search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your site complies with all legal requirements.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about why it’s important to have a compliant website, see this article:
Post Tags & Categories
WordPress post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.
(Categories help search engines classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of 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 two different things. 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 results in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post fresh content consistently to start attracting web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals months 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 Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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