In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting & Financial Businesses
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Basic Pages
- Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors To Your Site
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Web Site’s Features And Functionality
- WordPress Themes – An Overview
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your content posts.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you run a social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Use this WordPress plugin to 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 WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social features to your site using WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
This section looks at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared online with new prospective clients
An effective strategy for getting your visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide users with high value content and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to contact you. A contact form also lets users report problems, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- More convenient for site visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Provide Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site to immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are 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. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Leases
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers loads of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin allows users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for vehicle loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to 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, quoting, 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 others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, accessing 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket management system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes For Accounting Businesses
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accountancy firms. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can customize Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme has a variety of 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, search optimized, and loads fast. It provides the features you need without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here for more details:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
For more details, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was created specifically for accounting services. It provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive. 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.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements designed specifically to give your accounting 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 fully responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
More information:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This premium theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any type of professional site you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
Go here for more information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was created specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 unique color schemes, 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 access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically designed to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This theme was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those that provide tax services. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help grow your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more details, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
Finance Business was built specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and lots 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
We hope that you have found this article on how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation with plugins helpful.
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