In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Online Economy
- Ways To Improve Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Website With WordPress Plugins
- WP For Newbies – An Overview Of Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Website Generation With Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn how to improve your accounting website with WordPress themes and plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available also a number of plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own social community on WordPress, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
How To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
This section covers ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- 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 provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with users
- Provides another way for your content to be shared around with other prospective customers
A proven way to attract subscribers is to provide users with information of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a useful report, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also allows visitors to report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they want to discuss. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their visits and appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Accounting WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Tax
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin offers loads of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font family, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for car loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
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 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.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand 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 your WordPress 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, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, access 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticket 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, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customers and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme 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 (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
You can easily customize Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included with your purchase.
To learn more about using this theme, visit the theme website:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This one is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s created specifically for accounting services. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to help make your accounting site 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 accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional site you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their page without editing a single line of code.
(Divi WP Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include bar counter, blurb, contact form, email optin, image, map, portfolio, pricing table, testimonial, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically created to make corporate sites look good.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, six unique color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This one was built to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those offering tax services. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to 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)
This premium theme was specifically developed for businesses that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This 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, animated elements, and a lot more.
More information:
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 to improve SEO, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation with plugins and themes helpful.
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