In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting business online, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Basic Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Blog’s Features And Functionality
- Understanding WordPress Themes
Tips For Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster indexing of pages
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
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 indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This plugin can be used to set up a social network on your website.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to run your own discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can add social features to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared around with other potential clients
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide users with valuable information and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch. Readers can provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reduces 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 post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select the topic they want to discuss. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can find your office more easily
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- CD
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(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 a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with a number of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customization features include height, width, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating repayments on automotive loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends 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 clients itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, display 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 system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticketing system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage clients and invoices, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
Accounting Pro is an inexpensive turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has 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, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand this theme using premium add-ons.
Go here for more details:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This inexpensive theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy 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 cost of purchase.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for accountants. It allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit 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.
For more details about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed 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 responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create any kind of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their web pages without editing code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include accordion, blog, code, divider, filterable portfolio, map, person, sidebar, social media follow, toggle, fullwidth image, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 stunning themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium WordPress theme was created specifically to make corporate sites look great.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six different unique color schemes, 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.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This one was specifically designed to help those in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically designed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help establish your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This theme was developed specifically for organizations that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot 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 comprehensive guide on WordPress plugins for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and web traffic generation useful.
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