In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting & Financial Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With Plugins
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Visitors To Your Website
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available various plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to run a social community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin lets you run your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add powerful social sharing features on your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we discuss ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide them with information of high value and give them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive report, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Contact forms also let users report problems, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for site visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you add multiple contact forms to your site, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so users can select which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your WordPress site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display 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 Generate More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Website With Plugins
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- CD
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
The plugin provides several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customization features include height, width, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating repayments on car loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
The plugin 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 forms 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.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and others.
You can add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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 WP Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, 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 WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accountancy businesses. With these themes you can have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily expand Accounting Pro using premium add-ons.
Go here for more details:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium theme for WordPress comes in a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. It provides what 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 purchasing.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
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 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.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was developed specifically for accounting businesses. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, many color choices, is easy to use, SEO friendly, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it 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 information, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements designed specifically to help make your accounting website look professional while not 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 services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built 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 for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more info:
Divi
(Divi)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a unique, professional site using its page builder or 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 change the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include accordion, blog, code, email optin, image, number counter, person, sidebar, social media follow, video slider, fullwidth image, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This theme from Elegant Themes was built specifically to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a 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 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 over 80 sleek business themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically developed to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing or tax help. The 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..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those offering tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help establish your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built for firms that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
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, this guide has helped you learn ways of improving search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation using plugins.
Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business …
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***