In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Basic Website Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- How To Improve Traffic
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Website Generation With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Improve Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster page indexing
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available various plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few powerful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Run a social community on your site, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Add social sharing features to your website.
(You can easily add social features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we discuss how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared with others
A proven strategy for enticing your visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value information and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Readers can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing 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 post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Adding A Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Financial WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site to immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Leases
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This free plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of 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 Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers a number of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, text color, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for automotive loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create 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 WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your 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.
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 notification e-mail 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 solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, 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.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This premium theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy Theme provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration 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.
Visit the theme site to learn more this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This one is designed for accountants. 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 color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to help give your accounting website a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a unique, professional site using the page builder or 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 change the structure of their pages without editing code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include bar counter, call to action, code, countdown timer, gallery, login, person, slider, social media follow, toggle, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was created specifically to make corporate sites look great.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It has six color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 stunning themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically to help finance professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms offering tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help establish your business reputation. It comes with different 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 WP Theme)
This premium theme was developed for firms that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, 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 settings, color management features, animations, and a lot more.
Visit this website for more information about 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
Hopefully, this guide has helped you learn ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and generate more traffic with plugins.
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