Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin bringing new traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically attract visitors just by regularly publishing new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
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. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are researching any advantage they believe will get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant 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 its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things are going well in the widget workshop when production suddenly grinds to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives soon afterward and, without uttering a word, immediately walks towards the control box. After staring at the control unit for what seems like 2 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a single tap about 3 inches from the right edge of the box.
Immediately, everything in the workshop begins to work again.
The floor 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 manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
With great anger, the manager rings the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things work as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites or online solutions.
External Sites And Solutions – Configuration
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your system, content linking back to your website is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the process 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, use your details with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, traffic monitoring information can be added to all of your web pages in WordPress via plugins used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, your account 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 and a self-hosted 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 a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. 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 the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to configure these as part of 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 attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
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 of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields 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 important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 readers 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 a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify your update services list whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global 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 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
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely immune from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find 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 visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins.
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 default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
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 design and layout of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any type of business online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Categories And Tags
Tags & post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your online 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 not the same things. Only search engine bots can understand XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Another Source Of Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are greeted with an error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to begin attracting more traffic is publish new content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
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 covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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