In Part One of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your accounting business online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Create Better User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WP Plugins To Improve Your Website’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Improve Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve your website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to 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, comments, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress WordPress plugin to set up and manage a social community on your website, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Set up an online forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features to your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with other ways for subscribers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe is to provide users with high value information and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Readers can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for users
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Adding Maps
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your WordPress site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their meeting or appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Leases
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
The plugin comes with loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customization features include height, width, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for calculating repayments on automotive loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send 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 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.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, access reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports different 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 Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
Visit this website to learn more this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
Kathryn is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework built specifically for accounting services. It offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, flexible rotator, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme 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 information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This theme was designed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to help give your accounting business website a professional look without 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 services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress 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 includes a custom post type for 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 Theme)
This premium theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create any kind of professional website you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include audio player, blog, code, countdown timer, gallery, login, person, slider, social media follow, video slider, fullwidth header, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This one was specifically created to make corporate sites look good.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investments or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those that provide tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services professionally and help grow your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a 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 Theme)
This theme was specifically designed for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you learn WordPress plugins and themes for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and driving more web traffic.
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