In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accounting & Financial Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- 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:
- Using WordPress Plugins Enhance Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes
Improving Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO Using WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your articles and posts.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many WordPress plugins that improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few 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 a social community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – This plugin helps you set up a forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features on your website.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
This section will show you ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving user engagement
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared with others
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value content and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Contact forms also let users report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some popular 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
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
The plugin comes with a number of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, scroll speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, text color, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for vehicle loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(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.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of your invoices, create quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and several others.
WP-Invoice lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, view 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin 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 For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoicing, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
It lets you get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting businesses. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can expand this theme with premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts to help 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 optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for accountants. It offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, various colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
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., is designed specifically to make your accounting business website look professional while not 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 section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create any type of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include audio player, call to action, code, email optin, gallery, map, portfolio, shop, social media follow, video slider, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium theme from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to make corporate sites look great.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, six unique different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 professional themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
Adviser was developed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
Tax Help was developed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those providing tax services. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way and help build your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium theme was specifically designed for firms that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
For more information, 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
Hopefully, this guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins for improving SEO, better user engagement and traffic generation.
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