In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Ways To Improve Website Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, we explore ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation with plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up an online social community on your website.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run a community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now take a look at how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value information and offer them an additional item of value for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a special report, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. A contact form also allows users to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to add multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another feature you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can choose the topic they want to discuss. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your website also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting or appointments
- Displays location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Improve Your SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins - Accounting And Financial Services
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Leases
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin gives you 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)
This plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin includes several customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on car loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, viewing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 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 multiple 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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes For Accountants
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to have 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)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy 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, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can expand Accounting Pro with premium add-ons.
To learn more about about this theme, visit this website:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This premium theme has 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. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically for accounting services. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, many color choices, is easy to use, 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 slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more details:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to give your accounting website a professional look without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme built specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create any type of professional site you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without editing code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This theme from Elegant Themes was created specifically to make corporate websites look good.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ stunning themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing advice 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.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and businesses offering tax assistance. It’s designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help grow your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for businesses that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
Go here for more information:
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
We hope that you have found this guide on ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your site with plugins useful.
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