Creating content can be hard.

Getting traffic can be hard.

But it doesn’t have to be.

You see, most people, myself included, can struggle to get things done because they try to do it all in one shot.

Studies have shown that by breaking things down into smaller parts you’ll be more successful.

And today I want to teach you how to create a page on your WordPress website that will help you market your course, generate more traffic, and sales.

This page helps you do that by being the main hub for a specific topic you want to be known for, and it will help you bring in more unpaid traffic to your website.

Plus once people land on this page, they will be more likely to stay on your website, and more likely to return.

Ready?

Then let’s jump in.

 

Use these links to jump ahead to different sections:

• Action #1 – Pick a theme
• Action #2 – Define the sections of your page
• Action #3 – Order your topics
• Action #4 – Curate the best content for your Journey Page
• Action #5 – Create your Journey Page in WordPress
• Action #6 – Add content to your Journey Page
• Action #7 – Write an introduction for your Journey Page
• Action #8 – Add descriptions to each section
• Action #9 – Add links to your blog posts and pages
• Action #10 – Create images for each section
• Action #11 – Add your section images to your Journey Page
• Action #12 – Force WordPress to display your Journey Page instead of your Category page
• Action #13 – Add breadcrumbs to your posts
• Action #14 – Update your main menu
• Action #15 – Promote your page using email

How I helped my client get 125% more traffic with the Journey Page Method

Now, before I get into the details of how you can get started, I want to tell you why you should care.

And the reason is, the Journey Page Method works.

In a recent project I worked on, I helped my client increase traffic to his website by 124%:

The Journey Page has also collected backlinks from over 30 different domains over the past 6 months with no link building or outreach:

The average number of pages that people visit per session also increased by 5.62%:

But how did I do it?

I did this, in part, by creating a Journey Page.

Journey Pages are a step up from hub pages.

A hub page is simply a page that links out to other pages of the same topic. A Journey Page does that too but has a slight twist.

A Journey Page is designed to display your content in sequential order with visuals to make it easy for people to see the path you want to guide them on.

In other words a Journey Page is organized in a way that holds your customer by the hand and walks them from point A, to point B, and so on.

The first step to create your Journey Page is to choose a theme, and the best place to start is with a problem you want to solve.

Action #1 – Pick a theme

Your Journey Page needs a theme, and this basically boils down to a specific topic or area of focus you specialize in.

If you’ve already been blogging, or have a course you probably have this covered and can skip ahead.

However, if you’d like to dig into this you can look at your WordPress Categories:

• Login to your WordPress website
• Click on “Categories” under the “Posts” menu on the right, then select one of the categories you see to the right:

• Make note of your category’s slug

For example, when we created the Journey Page on the Radreads website, our theme was Notion.

 

 

We chose Notion because we wanted to help people to be more productive, and Notion is a great tool for that.

Now that you have chosen your theme, it’s time to create your sections.

Action #2 – Define the sections of your page

The first step is to review the blog posts and pages you have. This will give you an idea of how we can break down your Journey Page into sections. Think of the sections as the milestones your audience should reach at each stage of their journey.

1. Login to WordPress
2. Click on “All posts” under “Posts” and select the “Category” you defined in action #1 then click “filter”
3. Now, review your list of posts and try to identify 3-5 different topics and add them to a Google Sheet or a piece of paper.For example, Teachable blog has 3 different categories on their blog, one of them being “Create your course”.They could organize this page in to sections like this:
   • planning your course
   • creating your course
   • selling your course.

Great, you’ve chosen a theme, and the sections for your Journey Page.

The next step is to put them in the right order.

Action #3 – Order your topics

This is an often overlooked step that a lot of people that create Hub Pages miss out on, but you’re not going to make the same mistake.

That’s because you know how important it is to make your page user friendly and super easy to digest, and ordering
the content is key to achieving that goal.

Here’s how:

1. Take your list of 3-5 topics from the previous step and write each of them on a post it note
2. With an absolute beginner in mind, order the post it notes so that your customer can learn
   the easiest, foundational topic first, and more advanced topic later.
3. Take a photo of your post it notes and send it to a friend or colleague for their feedback.Ask for their first impression on both the order and the topic names to make sure they make sense.Choose someone you know will give you honest feedback because you don’t want someone that will just tell you it’s perfect.
4. Update the order of your topics if needed

If you did this and received feedback, great job!

Most people are reluctant to ever ask for feedback, myself included, but when you are designing your journey page you need it to be easily understandable.
And because you are so close and knowledgeable about the content it can be hard to get out of your own way.

With your outline ready it’s now time to select the content for your Journey Page.

Action #4 – Curate the best content for your Journey Page

Another big difference between your Journey Page and a category page on your blog has to do with what content is featured on this page.

In this step you are going to select the content that is the most useful for your audience, and performs the best.

The more selective you are the better the experience will be for your audience.

1. Go back to your list of blog posts, and cross off or delete posts you will not include
2. Review your pages by clicking on “Pages/All Pages” inside WordPress.
   Are there any pages you’d like to add to your Journey Page? If so, add them to your list.
3. Scan the bookmarks in your browser for anything that is worth sharing.
4. Order your posts, pages, links under each topic you defined in action #3
5. Review your list one last time and make sure your topics posts and any pages are in the correct order.

You are now ready to jump in and start creating your page inside WordPress.

Action #5 – Create your Journey Page in WordPress

1. Go to your WordPress website and login
2. Click on Pages/Create new page
3. Enter a name for your new page that matches your category page
4. Make sure the slug matches the slug of a category on your blog. You can do this by clicking on Posts/Categories.
   Then click on “Edit” beneath the category you’d like to view
5. Jot down the slug you see, make sure your new page has the exact same slug (ie: if your category’s slug is “create” your page’s slug should also be “create”).

 

Action #6 – Add content to your Journey Page

With your Journey Page created, it’s time to add your content.

You’ve already put this together over the previous steps so this is going to be pretty straightforward.

Note: If you are using a pagebuilder please take a look at the links below to the most popular
WordPress page builders to help you in case you get stuck

1. Copy the topics and content from your Journey Page Google Doc, Paste it into your newly created page in WordPress.
2. Format the topics as headers by highlighting the text, and selecting “Heading 2” from the paragraph drop down
3. Highlight the blog posts or pages underneath each heading and click the “list” icon. You can choose bullets or numbers, either one works.

Everyone uses a different builder and theme.

So I’ve put together a list of the most popular WordPress page builders out there today for you, where you can get help if you need
some extra guidance putting your Journey Page together (oh and if your pagebuilder is not listed here, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to help you):

• Elementor
• Beaver Builder
• Divi Builder
• Thrive Architect
• SiteOrigin Page Builder
• WPBakery Page Builder
• Themify Builder
• Brizy
• Visual Composer
• WP Page Builder

 

Action #7 – Write an introduction for your Journey Page

Now that you’ve added your list of sections and topics you are going to amplify the utility of your page with a simple introduction.

This will make it clear for your customer what to expect on this page:

1. Briefly outline why the topic of your Journey Page is important

Example intro:
You may already know that SEO has the highest ROI of any marketing channel. [Why the topic is important]

2. Mention a common challenge (or challenges) people face about this topic

Example:
For SEO to work you need to build content, build links, and promote your content… and then have Google actually index and rank your content. [Challenges]

3. Position your Journey Page as a solution:

Example:
In this guide you’ll find solutions to all of those challenges and more. [Pitch]

 

Action #8 – Add descriptions to each section

Now that your page has an intro, let’s do the same for each section.

This is a summary of what your readers will learn from each section no longer than 200 characters for each section

1. Tell them what they will learn in this section:
2. Tell them why that’s useful for them:

Example:

Learn how to create, update and delete templates inside Adobe Photoshop.
This will help you save time and fast track your workflows.
Plus get access to the most used templates for getting started on your productivity journey.

 

Action #9 – Add links to your blog posts and pages

You already added your list of posts, and or pages, so that people will be redirected to each post when they click on them:

1. Open your Journey Page inside WordPress
2. Highlight the name of the blog post or page you want to link to
3. Click on the “link” icon (or click “ctrl + k” on your keyboard )
4. Search for the blog post or page you want to link to, then click apply (your version or setup of WordPress may look different)
5. Do not set the pages to “open in a new window”.You shouldn’t have to worry about this because by default the links should open in the same window, but I wanted to make a note of that here.Your Journey Page will be more user friendly if the links open in the same page, plus some browsers may block links that open up new windows.
6. Repeat steps 1-5 until you’ve added links to all of the content you want to link to

 

Action #10 Create images for each section

Your Journey Page has all of the major parts ready to go.

Now, you are going to create eye-catching images.

This is super important because as you know people are distracted these days.

But you don’t need a degree in Fine Arts or be a Photoshop wizard to get this done because
I’ll walk you through the steps of how to do create the images right here:

1. Head over to Canva.com and login or sign up for a free account
2. Click on “Create Design” , then enter 350 for the image width, and 300 pixels for the height, then click “Create new design”

1. Next click on “Elements” and search for “square” and select a square with rounded borders. It will automatically be added to the canvas when you click on it
2. Resize the square so that it touches the edges of your artboard, by dragging the edges of the square to the top, then the right, the bottom, then the left of the artboard.
3. With your square selected, give it a color by clicking on the color picker icon, and choosing a color you want.
4. Now let’s search for an icon to add to your image. Simply type in the name of your topic and select an image you like. I searched for “project management” in this example:
5. Resize the image so that it fills up about 50%-75% of the square.
   Then, center your image, by clicking and dragging it to the middle of the canvas until you see a horizontal and vertical line in the middle of it.
6. Next, click on the “Text” menu button, and select “Add a subheading”. Enter the name of your section.
   For example, if this image is for a section about “Project Management”, type in Project Management, and position the text where you like it.
   Feel free to change the text color to look nice with your background color.
7. When you are happy with the image, click the “Download” button, then check the “make image transparent” checkbox, then click Download.
8. To create a new image, click on the “+ Add Page” at the bottom of the screen.
   Copy the background square from the previous image and paste it into the empty page you just created.

Repeat steps 7-14 for each image you would like to create.

You can also download all of the images at once, by clicking on “Download” then click on the dropdown menu under “Select pages”,
then click the “All Pages (1-n)” check box, then click download.

The last two steps are the hardest, but don’t worry I’ve easy to follow steps for you.

Action #11 Add your section images to your Journey Page

The instructions below are the most basic possible just to get you started.

I did this because there are too many page builders and themes to write about here:

1. Head over to your Journey Page inside WordPress
2. Scroll down and click where you would like to add your image
3. Then click on the image icon to insert image, and select the respective image for that section
4. Align your image to the left, by selecting it and clicking the “align left” icon
5. Repeat this process for each of the images you created for each section.

For more detailed help on how you can create a customized layout for your Journey Page, checkout a link the page/theme builder you use listed below:

• Elementor
• Beaver Builder
• Divi Builder
• Thrive Architect
• SiteOrigin Page Builder
• WPBakery Page Builder
• Themify Builder
• Brizy
• Visual Composer
• WP Page Builder

 

Action #12 – Force WordPress to display your Journey Page instead of your Category page

Before you begin this step I highly recommend you try this in a test environment because you are about to make a few tweaks to how WordPress reads your categories.

I’ve never had any issues and have done this on a number of websites, but it’s still best to be safe.

Good thing is that nowadays most web hosts give you the ability to create a backup and or staging version of your website for such tests.

With that, let’s get into the steps on how to tell WordPress to display your new Journey Page instead of your category page.

1. Enter the url of your Journey Page into your browser – example: yourwebsite.com/journeypage
(remember: this needs to be identical to a category in WordPress. If you already have posts associated with a category that’s fine too).

You’ll notice that WordPress will display your category page and not your Journey Page.
But we will change that in the next few steps.

2. Download the Yoast SEO plugin

3. From your WordPress admin panel, click on Plugins/Add Plugin, then upload the Yoast SEO zip file, and click install

5. Next click on Settings/Permalinks, then select “Custom Structure” and enter /%category%/%postname%/ in the field

6. Scroll down and change “Category base” to a single dot. “.” (no quotes), click Save

7. Now head over to the SEO taxonomies settings: WP Dashboard/SEO/Search Appearance/Taxonomies

8. Scroll down until you see a tab labeled “Remove the categories prefix”, and select “Keep”, then click “Save changes”

9. Clear your cache – If you are using caching plugins like WP Rocket, or SG Cache, flush your cache

10. View your journey page now.

Action #13 Add breadcrumbs to your posts

The last action step is to add breadcrumbs to your posts.

This is super important because it helps your users easily navigate back to your Journey Page.

It also helps to build internal links across your posts that can help with your organic traffic.

These steps are specifically for the Yoast SEO Plugin:

1. Login to your WordPress website
2. Click on “SEO” in the left navigation menu, then click on “Search Appearance”
3. Then click on “Breadcrumbs” and then click “Enabled” to enable Breadcrumbs.
4. Click on Appearance/Theme Editor
5. Add this code to your single.php theme file at the top of the file just below this line of code that add the header to the page:

if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {

yoast_breadcrumb( '<p id="breadcrumbs">','</p>' );

}

Breadcrumb code for Yoast SEO

Here is where you need to paste the Yoast code to display breadcrumbs:

 

If you use the Twenty_Fifteen theme your code will look something like this:

<?php

/**

* The template for displaying all single posts and attachments

*

* @package WordPress

* @subpackage Twenty_Fifteen

* @since Twenty Fifteen 1.0

*/

 

get_header(); ?>

 

<div id="primary" class="content-area">

<main id="main" class="site-main" role="main">

 

Sample single.php code for the Twenty Fifteen theme

Once you add the code for the Yoast breadcrumb, your code will look like this:

<?php

/**

* The template for displaying all single posts and attachments

*

* @package WordPress

* @subpackage Twenty_Fifteen

* @since Twenty Fifteen 1.0

*/

 

get_header();

if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {

yoast_breadcrumb( '<p id="breadcrumbs">','</p>' );

}

?>

<div id="primary" class="content-area">

<main id="main" class="site-main" role="main">

 

Sample single.php code with the Yoast breadcrumb code

See this guide if you need more tips on how to customize your breadcrumbs using Yoast

See this guide if you need more tips on how to edit files on WordPress

Action #14 – Update your main menu

Now that your Journey Page is published and ready to go, it’s time to promote it.

The first place to start is with your main menu.

Inside WordPress click on Appearance/Menus, then select your main menu

Select your newly created page from the list of pages and click “Add to Menu”, then click “Save Menu”

Action #15 – Promote your page using email

The next place you want to promote your new page is in your email.

You can do this by sending out a notification to your email list about your newly created resource. Letting them know they can bookmark this page because you will be updating it with your best content over time.

You can also add a link to this page in your email signature.

Like this:

Start your Journey

There you have it, a step-by-step guide on how to create a Journey Page.

This page generated serious results for my client and I’m sure it will be helpful for you too.

This is also a great strategy because it will help you to establish your expertise, and position your brand. Plus, you don’t really have to create too much extra content, its more about organizing it and presenting it in a way that is super helpful for your audience.

Now, I know this guide is very long, so take it one step at a time, and if you get stuck or have any questions just let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to help you.