In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Online Economy
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Extend Your Website’s Capability
- WP For Beginners – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Tips For Improving Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. In this section, we explore WordPress plugins that can improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run a social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – Use this free plugin to set up an online discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send 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.
- Floating Social – Easily add social sharing features on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we will discuss ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engagement with your users
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared with others
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets visitors report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free plugin allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms on your website, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are useful tools for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits and appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Accounting Website
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(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 sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
This plugin comes with a number of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customizations include height, width, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets your users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for car loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing 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)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF invoices, create quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many 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 notification email 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
The plugin supports different 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 client data and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes listed below you can have a professional 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 an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded using premium add-ons.
Visit the theme site to learn more about this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This one comes in a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, 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. Your purchase price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here for more information:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for accountants. It offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession you like, 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 – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to help give your accounting site a professional look. 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 section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more details about this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s 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 clean and loads fast.
More info:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional site using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their page without editing any code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include bar counter, blog, circle counter, email optin, gallery, map, person, shop, tabs, video slider, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all professional themes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically developed to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also has 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 over 80 sleek business themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was built specifically to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investments 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 widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was specifically designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms offering tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help grow your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This theme was developed for firms that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. It 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, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, visit this website:
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 ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase traffic to your accounting site generation with WordPress plugins.
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