Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post new content regularly to attract web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin bringing new visitors simply by publishing content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about any opportunity you can to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site 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 you.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was going just fine in the widget plant when production suddenly came to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, headed out immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for what seemed like about 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy little hammer and made a single tap about 1 inch from the top-left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything started working once more.
The manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things function to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts including your server, your site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website gets automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you tell 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.
Once your account and site details with Google are set up, your information can be used to automate web traffic-related 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 activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, visitor tracking information can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details have been set up, your information can be used to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(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 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 social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to many social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring Your WordPress Site 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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
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 purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you 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
***
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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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 checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify the update services list whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely safe from cyberattacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find, crawl and index your website …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, 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 liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also provide options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Features
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic system 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 a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When online visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add great content on a regular basis to automatically start attracting traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration process can take many website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
- Web Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – How To Create An Automated Web Traffic-Getting Machine With WordPress
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
Would You Like To Get Automatically Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Are Published? Then Subscribe Using The Form Below!
***
"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
***