Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and 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 to automatically attract more traffic is add content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained 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 existing website 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 will look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to get new traffic automatically as you start publishing fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and are researching every advantage they can to improve their performance online.
Having the ability to automatically 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.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going well in the gizmo-making plant when everything comes to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walks towards the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his utility belt and makes a gentle tap near the top-left side of the unit.
Immediately, every machine springs back to life.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
With a sense of outrage, the manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your blog fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While many experts often make complex solutions look easy, 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 a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure everything functions as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your WP site, and various third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
External Web Properties And Accounts – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content is published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your business will be given additional exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmasters, you can use the details to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) 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 engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, use this information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional web presence.
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 this into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can 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 pages and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated 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 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 field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to notify various update services when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 posts, 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely safe from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
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 layout and design aspects of your website, many themes also give you options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website, go here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Tags & categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find your site’s 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 two different things. Although Google will 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 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will normally be presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is add content on a consistent basis to bring more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals months to learn.
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 explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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