In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting Businesses Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improve Your Business Online With WordPress Plugins and Themes
Web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section, you will learn how to improve your website using WordPress themes and plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of your content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you set up your own social networking community on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to run your own discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your site.
(You can easily add social features to your website using WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we will show you ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing engagement with your users
- Provides other ways for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Contact forms also allow readers to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website to immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs 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)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
The plugin offers several customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, background color, opacity, scrolling speed, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great financial tool for vehicle loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create a form 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.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and others.
WP-Invoice lets you add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, display 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage clients and invoicing, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily expand this theme through premium add-ons.
For more information, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This inexpensive theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. It provides the features you need without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme 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, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This one is built specifically for accounting services. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, various color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, 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 – WP Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to help make your accounting business website look professional without 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 section, and a blog.
Go here for more details about using this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
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 the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and edit the structure of their page without editing any code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to all themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This theme was created specifically to make corporate sites look great.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six unique color schemes, 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 full access to all professional themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium WordPress theme was designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses providing tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses the 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 one was specifically designed for firms that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred 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 lots more.
Visit this site to learn more this theme:
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 WordPress plugins for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and traffic generation.
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