In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Professionals
- How To Improve Your Website Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Improve Your Blog’s Capabilities
- WP For Business – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores how to improve your accounting business online with WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your website’s SEO:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Business Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins for WordPress that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up an online social networking community on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a third party subscription.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries
This section explains ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with your users
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared with other potential customers
A proven way to entice visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide users with high value information and give them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a special report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows visitors to provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides several benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature to consider is adding sections to your contact form so users can choose which topic they are contacting your company about. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map 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 Generate More Visitors To Your Accounting Site Using WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website to immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customization features include colours, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for car loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating forms 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 integrates billing into WordPress. You can send 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, create PDF versions of invoices, create quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, displaying reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticket system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
The plugin supports different 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best themes themes available for accountancy businesses. With these themes you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
This is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with 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.
You can customize this theme by installing premium add-ons.
Go here for more details:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and fast loading. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This premium WordPress 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 admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This one is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s developed specifically for accounting services. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme can easily fit 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.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to give your accounting business website a professional look. 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.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
For more details about this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a professional site using its 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 edit the structure of their web pages without touching any code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
This premium theme from Elegant Themes was created specifically to make corporate sites look great.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has six unique color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed to help finance professionals build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This theme was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms providing tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally and help build your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
Finance Business was designed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and lots 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, you have found this comprehensive guide on ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic with plugins helpful.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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