In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Site’s Capability
- WP For Business – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your web content
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress lets you set up your own social community on your site, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress allows you to run your own discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
This section explains how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for increasing user interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to entice your visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a useful report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also lets readers report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to add multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so users can choose which department they want to contact. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add A Map
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily and helps plan their appointments better
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
This plugin includes a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for auto loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, viewing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 most valuable clients and top grossing line items), and more..
For more details, go here}:
All In One Business Management Application
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily expand this theme using premium add-ons.
To learn more about about using this theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This one offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, loads fast, and fully responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Go here for more details:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This one is a child theme for the Genesis Framework developed specifically for accounting businesses. Kathryn offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, search optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although it can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy responsive slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements designed specifically to make your accounting website look professional while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
This is a corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more details about this theme, visit the theme site:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes audio player, blurb, contact form, countdown timer, image, number counter, portfolio, pricing table, testimonial, toggle, fullwidth header, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ stunning themes.
For more details about using this theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress from Elegant Themes was specifically built to make corporate websites look great.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with six different color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ professional themes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
Adviser was specifically developed to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
Tax Help was built for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally and help establish your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This theme was specifically developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and lots more.
More info:
Avada
(Avada Finance WordPress Theme)
Avada is a fully responsive and versatile multipurpose theme that lets you easily build, configure, and run any kind of website you want without touching code, including a website for an accounting or finance-related organization.
To learn more about the Avada theme for WordPress, go here: Avada
Hopefully, this article has helped you learn WordPress plugins that can help improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic.
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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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