In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Website Generation Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site With WordPress Plugins & Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways to improve SEO, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation using WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that search engines will display.
- 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 for better page indexing
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available dozens of plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up a social community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to set up your own community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social sharing features and buttons to your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries
This section covers how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for increasing user engagement
- Provides additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for getting your visitors to subscribe is to provide them with valuable content and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. Users can raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Maps
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins For Accountants
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- CD
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes 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 page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides several customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customization features include height, width, scroll speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows your users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating vehicle loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates 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, single-page 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 several 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 e-mail notification templates, display 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, helpdesk with support ticket management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
iBilling integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting 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, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize this theme through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
Accountancy has 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, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. Accountancy provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
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 with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was created specifically for accountants. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search 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 plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors 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 (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more details:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built for professional service providers 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. WP Advocate is clean and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a professional site using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their page without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as bar counter, call to action, circle counter, countdown timer, gallery, map, portfolio, pricing table, tabs, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress from Elegant Themes was developed specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 unique color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ sleek business themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This one was specifically developed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust through clean design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. The Adviser 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 WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms offering tax services. It’s designed to showcase your services professionally to help establish your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This one was developed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
For more information, go here:
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 comprehensive guide on ways of improving search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase traffic generation with WordPress plugins helpful.
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