Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to automatically attract web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation blueprint. We helped 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help get new visitors automatically to your site just by adding content on a consistent basis.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more a day posting content on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spent hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the numbers would probably be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These companies often will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budgets. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your web traffic generation 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more efforts, time, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated 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 websites, solutions, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to game online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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 WordPress website as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social media networks.)
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 displayed in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting system lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this great plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 authority websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about using this great plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore several social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. For more information, go here:
The above are just some 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 Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and set up, all you need to do then is post great content on a consistent basis to automatically begin bringing web traffic.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
***
"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
***