In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Online Economy
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- How To Improve Traffic
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is an important part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of your web content
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available quite a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin allows you to run a social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your site.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides other ways for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for enticing your visitors to subscribe is to provide high value content and give users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Readers can report problems, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- 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
- Convenience for users
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you insert multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides users with a number of benefits, such as:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily and plan their trips better
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress 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, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customizations include height, width, background color, opacity, scrolling speed, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great financial tool for auto loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
It will show 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 you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, view 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 support ticketing management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple 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 Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting – 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 own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting 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, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, fast loading, and is responsive. Accountancy provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with your purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here for more details:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This one is designed specifically for accounting businesses. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy responsive 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 premium theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to help give your accounting website a professional look. 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 section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a free corporate theme built for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean-looking and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create any type of professional website you want using the page builder or beautiful 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 redesign the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation Theme was specifically developed to create good-looking corporate websites.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy 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 over 80 stunning themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was developed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that offer tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help build your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was specifically built for firms that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. The 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, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
Visit this website to learn more about this WordPress theme:
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, you have found this comprehensive guide on ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors with WordPress plugins & themes helpful.
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