Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish content consistently to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain 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 website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can get traffic automatically to your website just by adding fresh content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would most likely be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in business automation to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 urge you to avoid using black hat software, strategies, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many 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 to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of posting content to individual channels, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this method 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 your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, get it configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate various processes using plugins like the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in your post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit the plugin website for more details about this powerful plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate your content to dozens of online websites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many social websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Automation System: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and configured, all you have to do to automatically generate more web traffic is post content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with endless content for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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