In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy
- Basic Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins & Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins
- WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Improve Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. In this section, we discuss ways of improving search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic with WordPress plugins.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up and manage your own social network on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to set up a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s now discuss ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with your users
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared around with other potential customers
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide users with valuable content and offer them something for free in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows visitors to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms on your website, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can select which department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps 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
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website to immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
The plugin comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include height, width, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, text color, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows users to calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful tool for calculating car loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.
It will display payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
This plugin 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, create PDF invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, displaying 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple 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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best themes themes available for accountancy businesses. With these themes you can have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme developed 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, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily expand Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme has a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and fast loading. Accountancy Theme provides the features you need without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
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 types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium WordPress theme was built for accounting services. 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, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
For more details, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This theme was designed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is designed specifically to give your accounting business site a professional look 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 accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed 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 staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
More info:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes audio player, call to action, code, countdown timer, image, map, person, pricing table, social media follow, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
For more details about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
The Corporation was specifically developed to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 different color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 themes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This one was developed specifically to help finance professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This one was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms offering tax services. Tax Help is designed to show your services in a professional way and 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.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
Finance Business was designed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, 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, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a whole lot 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
We hope that you have found this guide on WordPress plugins that can help improve SEO, increase user engagement and generate more visitors useful.
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