In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to build your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Services
- Improving Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- How To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Ways To Improve Website Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic with plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available many plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic 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)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress lets you run your own social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Set up an online community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Use this plugin to add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides several benefits, like:
- Drives 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 provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for increasing user engagement
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared with new potential clients
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with information of high value and give them something for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a special report, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. Visitors can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to insert multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so users can select the topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- They increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers 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 That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Accounting Or Financial Services Business Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of these:
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 and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Tax
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs 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 Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scroll speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, font size, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating car loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and 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 email notification templates, displaying 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 WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling lets you get paid faster online by integrating 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 suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accountancy firms. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers 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 expand Accounting Pro using premium add-ons.
To learn more about using this theme, visit this website:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
Accountancy has a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and loads fast. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed 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, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium 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., is designed specifically to help give your accounting business site 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 accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers 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. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their web pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically to create good-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It has six color schemes. It also has 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 over 80 professional themes.
Visit the theme site for more details about this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was developed to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was specifically designed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those that provide tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services professionally and help establish your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This theme was developed for firms that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and lots more.
For more details, go here:
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
We hope that you have found this guide on WordPress plugins that can improve SEO, improve user engagement and drive more visitors useful.
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