In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Opportunities For Accountants
- Essential Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Functionality To Your Website With WordPress Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Tips For Accountants – Improving Your Business Online Using WordPress Themes And Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
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 sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress lets you set up and run your own social network on your WordPress site, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Set up a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Easily add social sharing features and buttons to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will show you how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides additional ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to entice visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with valuable content and give them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows visitors to raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- More convenient for visitors
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free contact form plugin lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Another feature you may want to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the department they want to contact. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With Plugins
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- CD
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides loads of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful financial tool for calculating repayments on auto loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF invoices, create quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
WP-Invoice lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, view 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 solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage clients and invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
Accounting Pro is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized by installing premium add-ons.
More information:
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, SEO friendly, loads fast, 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 your purchase.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This one is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework created specifically for accounting services. Kathryn comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is responsive. Although this theme could easily suit 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, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements designed specifically to give your accounting website a professional look 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers 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 clean-looking and loads fast.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create any style of professional website you want using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their page without touching code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has audio player, blurb, code, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, map, person, shop, tabs, text, fullwidth image, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 stunning themes.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to make corporate websites look great.
This theme 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 comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
Adviser was specifically designed to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing advice or tax advice. Adviser 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..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This one was designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses providing tax services. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help build your business reputation. It comes with a range of 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 WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for businesses that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a lot more.
To learn more about using this 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, you have found this guide on WordPress plugins for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and generating more web traffic helpful.
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