In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting business online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting Services Face Online
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Basic Pages
- Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, we explore WordPress plugins for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and generating more visitors.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social community on your WordPress site, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up your own community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you 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.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with an additional way for your content to be shared around with new potential customers
A proven strategy for enticing your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide them with content of high value and give them free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a special report, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Contact forms also let users report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This plugin lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which topic they are contacting your company about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are just some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins And Themes
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
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 on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets 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 place a custom stock ticker on any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin provides loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customization features include colors, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
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 WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send 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, 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.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail 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 WP Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software 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 get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional 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 an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with 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 a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized using premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. 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 cost of purchase.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress 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, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This one is developed specifically for accounting businesses. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
For more information, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements 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 services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a unique, professional site using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes accordion, blog, code, divider, image, map, post title, shop, testimonial, video, fullwidth image, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all stunning themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This theme from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 different color schemes. It also comes with 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.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was built specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme 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.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This one was built for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms providing tax services. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally to help build your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and lots more.
Visit the theme website 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 guide on how to improve SEO, improve user engagement and generate more traffic with plugins & themes helpful.
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