Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add new content regularly to attract traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed 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 website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing as you start to publish new content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring every advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured website gives your business a flying start and a significant advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
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 describe the key difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things were going according to schedule in the gizmo assembly factory when all of a sudden, production stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately walked to the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a tiny hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap near the right-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything sprang back to life.
The plant manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic 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 factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make complicated 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! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure everything works as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. It’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different components including your server, your WP site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and/or online services.
External Services
The idea behind adding external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content linked back to your website will be automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website will then receive increased exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site data are set up, use the details to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add your account code to all of your pages in WordPress using plugins and send data instantly to various other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. 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 features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
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 page.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described 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 purposely 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 area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping the list of update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins allow you to specify which 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 followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
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 site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
Post tags & categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search bots can understand. Although Google can 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 results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is post great content consistently to begin attracting new web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some website developers months 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 addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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