In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your WordPress Site With Plugins
- A Basic Guide To Understanding Themes
Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic
Web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress allows you to run your own social network on your site, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress lets you set up a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with users
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for enticing visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and give users free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Contact forms also let users send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- 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
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so users can select the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Adding A Map
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are a useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits or appointments
- Display location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators 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 them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes loads of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating car loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing 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 business users with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of your invoices, create quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like 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 invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, 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 through premium add-ons.
For more information, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This one has a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This one is built specifically for accounting businesses. Kathryn comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it can easily fit 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.
Go here for more info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to help give your accounting business site a professional look without looking dull. 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 accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Visit this site to learn more this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a 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 includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify 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 page without touching code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as accordion, call to action, circle counter, divider, gallery, login, portfolio, pricing table, tabs, video, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
The Corporation WordPress Theme was specifically created to make corporate websites look good.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It has six different color schemes. It also comes with 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 over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium WordPress theme was built to help those in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more information, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way and help grow your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Visit this site to learn more this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
Finance Business was specifically designed for firms that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, 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
We hope that you have found this guide on ways of improving SEO, increase user engagement and increase web traffic to your site generation with plugins useful.
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