In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy
- Basic Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Website With Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using Plugins & Themes
Your web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Set up a social network on your website.
- bbPress – Set up a forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add powerful social sharing features on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
This section covers ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides you with other ways for readers to share your content
An effective way to get visitors to subscribe is to provide users with information of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be an exclusive report, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. A contact form also lets visitors report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing 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
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so users can select which topic they want to discuss. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website to immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Leases
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin gives you a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include speed, text, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating repayments on car loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s 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, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, displaying reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 WP Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin)
This 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 – Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Accounting Services
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best WordPress themes available for accountancy businesses. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has 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 lots more.
You can expand Accounting Pro with premium add-ons.
Go here for more information about using this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included in the price.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here for more information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for accounting services. Kathryn offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various colors, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to make your accounting business site look professional while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more info:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and redesign the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include audio player, call to action, contact form, countdown timer, image, number counter, person, slider, testimonial, video slider, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all stunning themes.
Go here for more information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to create great-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all sleek business themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investing or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms that provide tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally to help grow your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically designed for businesses that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
Go here for 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
We hope that you have found this guide on how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase visitors to your accounting business generation using plugins and themes useful.
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