In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Website Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improving Traffic
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
How To Improve Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better indexing of your content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Site
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast 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 user engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up a social network on your WordPress site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up and manage a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a third party subscription.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Easily add social sharing features and buttons on your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
This section covers ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides several benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving engagement with users
- Provides another way for your content to be shared around with others
A proven way to attract subscribers to your newsletter is to provide high value content and give users something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows readers to raise problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- 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 website
- More convenient for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and configure and lets you add multiple contact forms, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding 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
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, text color, font family, 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 great tool for car loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator 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 forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both 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, PayPal Payments Pro, and many others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, display 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best themes themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to 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)
Accounting Pro is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium WordPress theme offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
For more details about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was built specifically for accounting services. Kathryn offers multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, various color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements specifically designed to help give your accounting business site 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 and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
For more details about this theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily edit the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes accordion, blurb, code, email optin, gallery, map, person, shop, testimonial, toggle, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more details about using this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one from Elegant Themes was created specifically to create good-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with six color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing advice 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.
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This one was developed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help grow your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was designed for organizations that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, 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 the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
Visit this website to learn more about using 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, this article has helped you learn how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic with plugins.
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