In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Site
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website With Plugins
Web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section, we explore how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more traffic using plugins and themes.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins that improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress WordPress plugin to set up your own social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up your own forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social sharing features to your site.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared online with new potential clients
An effective strategy for enticing your visitors to subscribe is to provide users with content of high value and give them additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This can be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Visitors can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms 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)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms to your posts and pages, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another option to consider is to segment your contact form so visitors can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some 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, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- CD
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes 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 comes with a number of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customization features include colors, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets users calculate indicative repayments. This is a great financial tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – 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 forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin 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 your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, view 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticketing system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like document management, to do app, 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 client data and invoices, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This is a turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting 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 a whole lot more.
You can easily customize this theme by installing premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This one comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium WordPress theme was designed for accounting services. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, various color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme 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.
For more information, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to help give your accounting business site 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding 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 premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create any style of professional website you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include bar counter, call to action, circle counter, divider, gallery, number counter, post title, shop, social media follow, text, fullwidth image, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 stunning themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically created to make corporate sites look good.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 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 access to all professional themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This theme was specifically built to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investments or tax help. The 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.
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme was specifically built for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax services. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to help grow your professional reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more details:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed for businesses that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a lot more.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
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 article has helped you learn WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic.
Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business …
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org
***