In Part One of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- How To Improve Your Website Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Blog’s Functionality
- WP For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes
Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster page indexing
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress allows you to run a social networking community on your site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up a discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(You can easily add social features to your site with WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared around with other prospective customers
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide users with content of high value and give them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Users can report problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- More convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you insert multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can select the department they want to contact. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add A Map
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find your office more easily
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are 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
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site Generation
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- CD
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin offers 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 specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, background color, opacity, scrolling speed, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator lets users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on car loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculators)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and 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, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
The plugin supports international 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 – WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting firms. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and fully responsive. It 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.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed specifically for accounting businesses. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit any profession you like, 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 – WordPress Theme)
This theme was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements specifically designed to help give your accounting business website 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional website you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi WP Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as bar counter, call to action, contact form, countdown timer, image, login, person, slider, tabs, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, 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 using this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This theme was built specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
To learn more about using this theme, visit this site:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect 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, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more information, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was designed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those offering tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally and help establish your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This one was developed for businesses that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, and a whole lot more.
Go here for more information:
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 article has helped you learn WordPress plugins for improving SEO, better user engagement and web traffic generation.
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