In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your accounting business online, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Basic Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins And Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section explores WordPress plugins that can help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has 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 new content on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available a number of plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – This free plugin lets you run your own discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(You can easily add social features to your website with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides several benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with your users
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared with other prospective clients
A proven way to get your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Visitors can provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and lets you create multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can choose the topic they are contacting your company about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Show location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help Improve Your SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available 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 plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin gives you a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios 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 page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin provides loads of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include speed, text, colours, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating auto loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
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 Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of your invoices, create quotes, create 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, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting 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, accessing 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 WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. With the themes listed 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 For WordPress)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can customize Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
Accountancy Theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This one is designed specifically for accounting services. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive. Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements designed specifically to help give your accounting business website a professional look without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s mobile-friendly and includes pages for your accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more details:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a corporate theme developed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a professional site using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and redesign the structure of their web pages without touching any code.
(Divi WP Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes audio player, blog, contact form, countdown timer, image, map, portfolio, slider, social media follow, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This one was developed specifically to make corporate sites look great.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has 6 color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium theme was developed to help finance professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investments or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This one was specifically designed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses offering tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more details about using this theme, visit the theme website:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium theme was specifically developed for firms that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 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, animations, and a lot more.
To learn more about this 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 guide has helped you learn how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic using WordPress plugins.
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