In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Web Site’s Capabilities
- WP For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes
How To Improve Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways of improving your website with WordPress themes and plugins.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin allows you to set up and run your own social community on your website.
- bbPress – This free plugin can be used to run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides several benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides another way for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users additional items of value for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Visitors can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you create multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Adding A Map
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your website also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Financial WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(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 post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin provides several customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, text color, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin allows users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
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.
This plugin 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, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
You can add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, view reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 ticketing system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports international 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 Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer 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 – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accountancy firms. With the themes listed below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
Visit this site to learn more this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
Accountancy has a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and loads fast. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with the price.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
For more details about this WordPress theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This one is developed specifically for accounting businesses. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
For more details, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to help give your accounting site a professional look. 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.
To learn more about this theme, visit this website:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a free corporate theme developed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress 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 beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their page without touching code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include audio player, blog, contact form, countdown timer, gallery, number counter, person, slider, testimonial, text, fullwidth image, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, 6 unique color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was developed to help those in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investment advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically developed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms offering tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way and help grow your professional reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically for firms that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. This 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, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
For more details about using this theme, visit this 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
We hope that you have found this comprehensive guide on how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors using WordPress plugins helpful.
Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business …
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***