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 Accountants
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Website Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
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
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up your own social networking community on your WordPress site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Run a forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Easily add social sharing features and buttons on your website or blog.
(You can add social features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we’ll show you ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with an additional way for your content to be shared around with other potential clients
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe is to provide them with valuable content and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Readers can report issues, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free plugin lets you add multiple contact forms on your site, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they want to discuss. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- They increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Website
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Payments
- Tax
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
The plugin offers several customizable features. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating auto loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator 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)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, access reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports international 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 Plugin For WordPress)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
iBilling integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting – WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accounting 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 Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized with premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This one comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
For more details about using this WordPress theme, visit this site:
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 with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
Kathryn is a child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s created for accounting businesses. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to give your accounting site a professional look without 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s 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-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily edit the structure of their page without touching code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include accordion, call to action, circle counter, email optin, image, map, post title, sidebar, social media follow, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design. It has six 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.
Go here for more info:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically built to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those providing tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help grow your professional reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more details, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
Finance Business Theme was specifically developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
For more details, 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, this comprehensive guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins that improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
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