Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically drive more traffic is add great content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained 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 was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing whenever you add web content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are researching any and every advantage they believe will help them increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is moving along in the gizmo assembly line when things come to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, heads out directly to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a single tap near the left-hand corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The plant manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites 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 site?)
While experts often make complex solutions look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many parts such as your server, your site, and a number of external sites and/or online services …
(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 something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure various external sites or online services.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your configuration, content linked back to your site is automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmaster Tools account has been set up, use the account information with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, your account code can be added to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details have been set up, use the account information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up in order to 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 visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, 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 an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different platforms you can add to your traffic blueprint. 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 third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
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 specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 Settings
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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping the update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings are 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WP Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web sites.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business 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 found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Tags & Categories
WordPress tags and categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engines can read XML sitemaps. 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 results in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your website enter 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 (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to bring more web traffic is publish web content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers 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 section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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