In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Essential Website Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic With Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WordPress Plugins Enhance Your Blog’s Functionality
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress WordPress plugin to set up and manage your own online social network on your website.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up and manage your own community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features to your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we’ll show you ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for your content to be shared with other potential customers
An effective strategy for attracting new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Contact forms also let users provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic Using Plugins
Accounting – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- CD
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin provides a number of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customizations include height, width, scroll speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating car loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It even 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, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, viewing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin 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 cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This premium WordPress theme has a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was designed for accountants. The theme comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, various color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This theme was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to give your accounting business site a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this theme:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and redesign the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include audio player, call to action, contact form, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, map, person, pricing table, testimonial, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This theme was specifically built to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six unique different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was specifically developed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those providing tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help grow your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for businesses that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, go here:
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 comprehensive guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic to your accounting or financial services business generation.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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