In Part One of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting Services Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve SEO, Create Better User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Tips For Improving Website Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and driving more visitors to your accounting site.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your content posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run your own social network on WordPress.
- bbPress – Run a discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides several benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving user engagement
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and give users free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. Contact forms also let readers send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can choose the topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Adding A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are just some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Accounting Site
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website to immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Leases
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customizations include speed, symbols, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great tool for calculating car loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a 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 Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, accessing 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticketing management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress 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 Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, 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 Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
iBilling lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes below you can own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme designed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress comes with a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here for more details:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This one is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s developed for accounting services. It offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, a variety of colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to give your accounting site a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s mobile-friendly and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This premium theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create any kind of professional website you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include accordion, call to action, contact form, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, map, post title, slider, social media follow, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation WordPress Theme was specifically developed 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 and features that toggle on and off. It has 6 different color schemes. It also has 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 full access to all themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This theme was specifically designed to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms providing tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally and help establish your professional 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 information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This one was built for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. It 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 settings, 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, you have found this article on WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and traffic generation useful.
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