In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- How To Improve Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WordPress Plugins Extend Your Website’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Business – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways of improving search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic using WordPress plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your content posts.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of your content
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more useful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social network on your site.
- bbPress – This free plugin can be used to set up a forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Add powerful social sharing features to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
This section will show you ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for readers to share your content
A proven way to attract subscribers is to provide high value information and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Contact forms also allow visitors to report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages 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
- Is convenient for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something 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 clients find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are just some popular 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
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
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 users. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- CD
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin gives you a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin comes with several customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include colors, speed, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for car loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create single-page 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, displaying reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 knowledgebase and support ticketing system, client relationship management and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like document management, to do app, 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 and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best themes themes available for accountancy businesses. With the themes listed below you can own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium theme comes in 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 section, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, loads fast, and fully responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can 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. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was built for accountants. Kathryn provides multiple layouts, slider, 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, search 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.
Visit the theme site to learn more this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to help make your accounting business website look professional 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
WP Advocate 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 employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
More information:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create any type of professional website you want using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their web pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
Divi 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. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all professional themes.
Go here for more information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This one was specifically created to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, six 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 full access to over 80 professional themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This theme was specifically designed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing advice or tax help. 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.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This theme was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses offering tax services. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help establish your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
Finance Business WordPress Theme was designed specifically for organizations that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
For more information, 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
Hopefully, you have found this article on WordPress plugins for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and web traffic generation helpful.
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