In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Opportunities For Accountants
- Basic Website Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- How To Improve Traffic
- Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Improving Website Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses ways to improve SEO, improve user engagement and generate more visitors using plugins & themes.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few useful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress lets you set up and run your own social community on your site.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to run a forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to 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 site.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons on your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we’ll show you ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide users with high value information and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets readers raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving 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
- Convenience for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another feature to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Add A Map
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Interest rate
- Payments
- Leases
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, speed, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for auto loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
It will show 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It also 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, quoting, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, displaying reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports international 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme created for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has 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 a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded using premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress comes with a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and fast loading. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with the cost of purchase.
Visit this site for more details about this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
Go here for more details:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
Kathryn is a child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s built specifically for accountants. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive (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 plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements designed specifically to help 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 mobile-friendly and includes pages for your accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
For more information about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a free corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the 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 and fast-loading theme.
For more information about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create any kind of professional site you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as accordion, call to action, circle counter, divider, filterable portfolio, map, post title, shop, tabs, video slider, fullwidth image, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This premium theme from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to make corporate websites look good.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium theme was developed to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This theme was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those that offer tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help grow your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium theme was built specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
Go here for more details:
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 comprehensive guide on how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic using WordPress plugins & themes helpful.
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