In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Ways 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 include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Ways To Improve Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your accounting site with plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO Using WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s 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 site’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some useful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own online social networking community on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up and manage your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides several benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide users with valuable information and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch. Visitors can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving 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
- Convenient for visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your website also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office more easily
- Show location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins And Themes
Financial WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This plugin gives you a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, scrolling speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, font family, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great tool for auto loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
It will show 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)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It even 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 the WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, view 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 Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
It allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has 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, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded through premium add-ons.
Go here for more details:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy Theme offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, 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.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created for accounting services. Kathryn comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession you like, 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 information about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This theme was designed with the idea of 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 without 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 services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built specifically 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 adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
For more information about using this theme, visit the theme site:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website using its 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 you to understand and easily change the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has bar counter, blurb, circle counter, email optin, filterable portfolio, login, portfolio, sidebar, tabs, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 stunning themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
This theme from Elegant Themes was specifically created to make corporate websites look good.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with six 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 80+ sleek business themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically to help finance professionals build trust through clean design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit this site to learn more about using this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically built for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that offer tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to help establish your business reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically built for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
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 guide on WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and driving more visitors to your accounting website helpful.
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