In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Services
- Basic Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Business Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins And Themes
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available many plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’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 can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run your own social network on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up and manage your own discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries
This section looks at how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide them with valuable content and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Contact forms also let visitors send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides many benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select which department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map Integration
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- CD
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
This plugin provides loads of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include speed, text, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free plugin allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful tool for calculating automotive loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator 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 a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out 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, 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and many 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 e-mail notification templates, access 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to 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)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized with premium add-ons.
For more information, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme offers a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for accounting businesses. Kathryn provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
For more details, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
Accounting WordPress Theme was built 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 business 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and edit the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was specifically built to make corporate sites look great.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six unique color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This one was developed to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services professionally to help build your professional reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This premium theme was developed for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business 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, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
Go here to learn more about this 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 SEO, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation using plugins useful.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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