In Part One of this article on ways to build your accounting business online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- How To Improve Traffic
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website Using Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Tips For Improving Traffic
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster indexing of pages
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available many plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to run an online social networking community on your WordPress website, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin lets you set up a discussion forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we show you ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared with others
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Users can report concerns, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin lets you add multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can select the topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Adding A Map
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Show location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more 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 For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Website
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site to immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Leases
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display 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 For WordPress)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
This plugin offers a number of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customizations include colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating repayments on auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a 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)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and many others.
The plugin gives you the ability to 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 e-mail notification templates, display reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with ticket management system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoicing)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as 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 invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accounting themes available. With the themes below you can have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This is a turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily expand Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
Go here to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This inexpensive theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy Theme 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 your purchase.
For more details about this theme, go here:
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 with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme was built for accounting services. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and provides a slider, multiple layouts, 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 responsive. 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 must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created to enhance 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 business website a professional look without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
This is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create a professional website using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes accordion, blurb, contact form, divider, filterable portfolio, login, portfolio, sidebar, tabs, toggle, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
The Corporation was designed specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has six unique color schemes. It also has 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 all professional themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This one was built specifically to help those in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
For more information, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms that provide tax services. It’s designed to showcase your services professionally to 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 many custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
Finance Business WordPress Theme was developed specifically for firms that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a lot 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
Hopefully, you have found this article on ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more traffic with plugins & themes useful.
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