In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting business online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Improving Traffic
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
How To Improve Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
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 (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin helps you set up your own social community on your website, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Set up your own online discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Easily add powerful social sharing features on your website or blog.
(You can add social features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we will show you ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing user engagement
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared with others
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide users with information of high value and give them additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also lets users report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces 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
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free plugin lets you add multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are great tools for several reasons:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Accounting Or Financial Services Site Generation Using Plugins And Themes
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these 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 for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Leases
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin gives you a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – 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 page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin offers a number of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating auto loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, accessing 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 Plugin)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Accounting
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting. With these themes you can own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized by installing premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This one comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy Theme provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This one is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework developed for accounting services. Kathryn provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is fully responsive. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was designed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to help make your accounting business site look professional without 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 services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more details:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more details:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily edit the structure of their web 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. It has bar counter, call to action, code, email optin, gallery, number counter, post title, pricing table, tabs, video slider, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
The Corporation WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to create great-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has 6 different color schemes. It also comes with 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 80+ professional themes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was designed to help finance industry professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was specifically developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those that offer tax services. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally and help grow your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
Go here for 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 guide on ways of improving search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors with plugins useful.
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