In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress 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 Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up and run your own social network on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Set up a community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides several benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides you with another way for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide them with high value information and offer them an additional item of value for free in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you create multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can select which topic they want to discuss. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Clients can better plan their visits and appointments
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google 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 Driving More Visitors
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your website to immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This 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 WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin comes with several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scroll speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, font family, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin lets your users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating vehicle loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many 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 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
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 For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
It integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, 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 own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily customize this theme with premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in your purchase.
Go here for more information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
Kathryn is built specifically for accounting services. Kathryn comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, and is 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 responsive slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more details:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed 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 website a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean-looking and fast-loading.
Go here for more information:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This premium theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a professional site using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their page without editing any code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all stunning themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was built specifically to make corporate websites look good.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. 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. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 stunning themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This one was specifically built to help those in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium theme was specifically built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally 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 many custom shortcodes.
For more details, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was specifically designed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
More information:
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, you have found this guide on WordPress plugins and themes for improving SEO, better user engagement and generating more traffic useful.
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