Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this 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 blog, all you have to do to drive traffic is post content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and how much work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and configured, you will bring new traffic automatically just by publishing new content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment 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 set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is going according to schedule in the gizmo workshop when all of a sudden, all machinery grinds to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, heads immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the box for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a single tap about one inch from the right-hand corner of the box.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Feeling furious, the manager dials the expert. Why had they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time delivering 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 and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that everything will work as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of a number of different components including your web server, your website, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration stage 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 simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web-hosting account specifically for handling 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 web traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your system, content linking back to your site is automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will then be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, use the details with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) 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, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic tracking information can be added to all of your pages in WordPress via a plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, use your details with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
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 this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part 4 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 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 drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an 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 various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into 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.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
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 prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is guaranteed immunity from being hacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Configuration Areas For WordPress Traffic Automation
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic 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 engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from 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 can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When online users enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish great content regularly to automatically attract web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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