Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
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 site, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 existing website has been 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 stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different, and what kind of work needs to be done to ensure that when all is fully configured, new web traffic will automatically start flowing as you start publishing fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any advantage they can to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand 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 site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in 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 kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going just fine in the gizmo-making assembly line when everything ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a very gentle tap about one inch from the left side of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine inside the assembly line returned once again to normal.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately 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?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring site settings for a client. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works as envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Web Properties And Services – Configuration
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content will be published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your traffic network, content linked back to your site gets automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will benefit from exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google Webmaster Tools have been set up, use the information to automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) 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 engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data automatically to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account, the information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, 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 plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to 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 sites and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different solutions that can be added to your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
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 …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read 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 here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to ping the list of update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely safe from a cyber-attack.
(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 botnets.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, you need to ensure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using 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.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When online users type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is post web content regularly to attract new web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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