Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to turn a site into an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to start driving web traffic is post fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help 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 existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss configuring the system.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we look at ways to automate traffic to your website with different plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more each day promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would probably be higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated web traffic solutions tend to focus on black hat methods, such as manipulating search engine results. This is not what the focus of this article series is about. In fact, we recommend avoiding black hat tools, sites, strategies, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to individual channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one instead …
(Set up an automated content distribution, lead and traffic generation, and sales and marketing system with WordPress)
With an expertly configured WordPress site, you can build more than just a website for your business … you can set up an automated traffic and lead generation and sales & marketing system, where all you do is publish your content and WordPress then automates the rest.
With WordPress, you can publish content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Automatically import content (e.g. videos)
As your business evolves, you can add more functionality and automate processes like:
- Sell products and services with e-commerce,
- Capture leads with opt-in forms and add your subscribers to newsletters and autoresponders,
- Allow visitors to register on your site with different membership levels,
- And so much more!
You can do all of this using inexpensive WordPress plugins. Once these plugins are installed and configured on your site, just direct your visitors to the appropriate sections (e.g. your store, subscription forms, membership area, etc.)
How do you do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your visitors engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like SEO backlinks, using keywords in the user name, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
For more details about the benefits of this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed content to dozens of authority websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit this website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), or to learn more about social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about, refer to this article:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
Kickstart Your WordPress Traffic System
After your traffic automation system has been set up, we recommend kickstarting the process of driving traffic to your site with the steps shown in this tutorial:
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and configured, all you need to do is post content on a regular basis to attract more web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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