In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Web Economy
- Essential Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. In this section, we discuss WordPress plugins for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and traffic generation.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of pages
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available quite a number of plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use this WordPress plugin to set up an online social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Use this plugin to set up and run your own online forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s now take a look at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared with new prospective clients
An effective way to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and offer them a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. Readers can send feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits including:
- Reducing 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 post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 lets you insert multiple contact forms to your site, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can select which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Adding A Map
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can find your office more easily and plan their trips better
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your website 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 That Can Help Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators 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. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- CD
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
The plugin offers a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, scroll speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, font size, text color, 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 vehicle loans, property, or other large loans.
(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 displaying 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with 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 your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, accessing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoicing)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin)
iBilling 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 – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accounting themes available. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can expand this theme by installing premium add-ons.
For more details about using this theme, visit this site:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This inexpensive theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and one year of support.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here for more information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This one is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s developed for accountants. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to make your accounting business site look professional without 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 accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their page without touching any code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has bar counter, blog, contact form, countdown timer, image, login, portfolio, sidebar, social media follow, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 professional themes.
For more information about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme from Elegant Themes was designed specifically to create good-looking corporate sites.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, six different 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 80+ themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms offering tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services professionally to help grow your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This premium theme was designed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, accounting, loans, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
More info:
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, this guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins and themes for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and generating more traffic.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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