In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic
- How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Business Generation With WordPress Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Improve Website Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will display in their search result pages.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your content
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available also a number of plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run a social networking community on your WordPress website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run your own discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s discuss now ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides another way for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to entice visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide them with valuable information and offer them a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Contact forms also let visitors report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits including:
- Reducing 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
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to insert multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Add A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting or appointments
- Display location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Your SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Leases
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This plugin gives you a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
The plugin comes with several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes 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 height, width, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, text color, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free plugin allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating repayments on auto loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include showing 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 WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of your invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and several others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, viewing 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 Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticketing system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, 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 – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Accounting
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, 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 using premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This inexpensive theme has a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed for accounting services. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search 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 plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about about using this theme, visit the theme site:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was built to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to 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 responsive and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a corporate theme developed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their web pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as accordion, call to action, code, email optin, image, login, person, sidebar, social media follow, toggle, fullwidth image, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
The Corporation Theme was specifically created to make corporate websites look good.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice 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 which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This theme was designed specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This one was developed specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those providing tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to help establish 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.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built specifically for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, accounting, loans, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a whole 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 for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and traffic generation.
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