In Part One of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your accounting business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic
- Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WP Plugins Enhance Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality
- WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages 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 content images for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
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
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you set up your own social networking community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run a forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives 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 new opportunities for user interaction
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide them with valuable content and offer them additional items of value for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Contact forms also allow visitors to send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, 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.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so visitors can select which topic they are contacting your company about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your website also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Maps help 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
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins For Accounting Businesses
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(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 sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
The plugin comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, opacity, scrolling speed, number of stocks displayed at one time, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great tool for automotive loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
It will display payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create forms 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.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of invoices, create quotes, create 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.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, display reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple 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 Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, 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 have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
You can expand Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
For more information, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress comes with 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 optimized, and loads fast. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in the price.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
For more details, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme was developed for accounting services. Kathryn offers multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, many color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is 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 slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was 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 (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme built specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a unique, professional site using its 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 anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their web pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 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. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
For more details about using this theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium theme was specifically created to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, 6 different unique color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was built specifically to help finance professionals build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit this website to learn more this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those providing tax services. The theme is designed to show your services professionally and help grow your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
Finance Business WordPress Theme was specifically developed for firms that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and lots more.
Visit the theme website to learn more about using 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
We hope that you have found this guide on WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and driving more visitors useful.
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