In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- Basic Pages
- Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress Themes And Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and driving more web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up and manage an online social community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Run an online community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add social sharing features to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social features to your website using WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s discuss now ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared online with others
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch with you. Contact forms also allow users to report issues, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin lets you insert multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Add A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your WordPress site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins - Accounting Businesses
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
This plugin includes loads of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colours, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free plugin lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful tool for calculating vehicle loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator 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 Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page 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.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, 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, 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 WP Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket 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 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 client data and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
iBilling integrates 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. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. With these themes you can have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded using premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium WordPress theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was created for accountants. The theme provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme can easily fit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements designed specifically to help give your accounting business website 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 (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include audio player, call to action, code, divider, image, login, person, slider, tabs, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium WordPress theme from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, 6 unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all beautifully-designed themes.
For more information, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
Adviser was designed to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
Tax Help was developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. The theme 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.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically designed for businesses that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and lots more.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
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 WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, better user engagement and generating more visitors helpful.
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