In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Online Economy
- Basic Pages
- How To Improve 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 Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Ways To Improve Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – This free plugin lets you run your own forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s discuss now how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends 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 engagement with your users
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared with others
An effective way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide users with high value content and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers 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.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for visitors
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can select the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Adding A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- They increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
The plugin comes with several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful financial tool for calculating vehicle loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
This plugin 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, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, 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 others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, view 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like 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 clients and invoicing, track 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 Invoice)
iBilling lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accountancy businesses. With the themes listed below 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)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This inexpensive theme offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in your purchase.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has 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 fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This one is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework created for accountants. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, a variety of color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to make your accounting business site 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more details:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a unique, professional site using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include bar counter, blurb, code, email optin, filterable portfolio, map, portfolio, pricing table, testimonial, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically to create good-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 sleek business themes.
Go here for more information:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This theme was developed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust through clean web design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. Adviser 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 Theme)
This one was specifically built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms offering tax services. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way and help establish your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for firms that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, and lots more.
Visit this site to learn more this WordPress theme:
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 article on ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic with WordPress plugins helpful.
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