In Part One of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your accounting business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Improving Your Website Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WordPress Plugins Extend Your Site’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Newbies – An Introduction To WP Themes
Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website
Your web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will show to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve your website’s SEO, increase 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 plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to run a social network on your website.
- bbPress – Set up an online forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for enticing visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide high value content and give users additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This could be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Visitors can report problems, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms to your site, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so users can select which topic they are contacting your company about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Adding A Map
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your website also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily and plan their visits better
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the more popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site to immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- CD
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can place a custom stock ticker on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides several customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating car loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The plugin 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 business 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. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice lets you add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, access reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, to do app, 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 customers and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several 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 own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This is a 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, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded using premium add-ons.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This premium WordPress theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps 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 loads fast. Accountancy provides the features you need without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and one year of support.
For more information about using this theme, visit this website:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It 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 responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
Kathryn is created specifically for accounting businesses. Kathryn comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, various colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is fully responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to give your accounting business website a professional look. 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 section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a corporate theme built for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and fast-loading.
More information:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their web pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include bar counter, blurb, code, email optin, image, map, post title, sidebar, testimonial, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 sleek business themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium theme from Elegant Themes was built specifically to make corporate websites look great.
The Corporation has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, 6 unique 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 all themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was built to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for those 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 lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
For more details about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
Tax Help Theme was built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those that offer tax services. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to help establish your professional reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
Go here for more details:
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 & themes for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and driving more web traffic.
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