In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- How To Improve Traffic
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Web Site’s Functionality
- WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes
Improve Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section explores WordPress plugins & themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up a social community on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up and manage a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides another way for your content to be shared with others
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value content and give users something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Readers can send feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces 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
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you create multiple contact forms to your website, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so visitors can choose the topic they want to discuss. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Map Integration
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a useful tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Tax
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing speed, text, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful financial tool for automotive loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
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)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF invoice versions, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and several others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, view 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 Plugin)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, 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 – Client 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, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme designed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
For more details about using this theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This inexpensive theme offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and fast loading. 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 with the cost of purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed for accounting services. It provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, 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.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was created with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to give your accounting site a professional look while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the 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. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create any kind of professional site you want using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and edit the structure of their pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to all themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed to create great-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 unique color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates that 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.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser)
The Adviser WordPress Theme was developed specifically to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investments or tax help. The Adviser theme 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 information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those that offer tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Visit this site for more information about using this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as 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 settings, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
More info:
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 web traffic helpful.
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