In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting business online, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting Businesses Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic With WordPress
- How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your WordPress Web Site With Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your content posts.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This plugin helps you set up and run a social networking community on your WordPress website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up and manage your own community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Providing A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared online with others
A proven way to attract subscribers is to provide high value content and give users a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch. Users can report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This plugin allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the department they want to contact. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins 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
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides several customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include height, width, background color, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for car loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
This 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 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 WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates 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 locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoices, create 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, accessing 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 knowledgebase and ticket management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports international 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 For WordPress)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage clients and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This is a turn-key theme built for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily expand this theme by installing premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This inexpensive theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. It provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included in your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium theme was created specifically for accounting services. It allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and offers a slider, multiple layouts, 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, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it 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.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements designed specifically to make your accounting business site look professional while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s mobile-friendly and includes pages for your accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
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. It also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a professional website using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi WP Theme – Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include bar counter, blurb, code, email optin, gallery, login, post title, pricing table, tabs, toggle, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ sleek business themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was created specifically to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, six different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
Adviser was specifically designed to help finance industry professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
For more information, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
Tax Help was built specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those that provide tax services. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way and help build your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
Finance Business Theme was specifically built for organizations that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management, animated elements, and a lot more.
Go here for more information:
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 ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your accounting site using plugins and themes.
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