In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To WP Themes
Improve Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Set up your own online social network on your website, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress plugin to run your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared online with other prospective customers
A proven way to attract subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows readers to raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so users can select the topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides a number of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customization features include height, width, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font family, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for vehicle loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
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)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It even 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email 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)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional 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 and communicate with customers, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
It allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best WordPress themes available for accountancy firms. These themes allow you to have 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 premium theme for WordPress is a 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 (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized with premium add-ons.
For more information, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This inexpensive theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, SEO friendly, loads fast, and fully responsive. Accountancy Theme provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here for more details:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically for accountants. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with 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, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress responsive slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to make your accounting business site 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 CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built 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 adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create a professional site using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more details:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically built to make corporate sites look great.
It 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 access to over 80 sleek business themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
The Adviser WordPress Theme was designed specifically to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investments or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms offering tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help build your professional 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.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
Finance Business Theme was specifically developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, and a lot more.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, visit this website:
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
We hope that you have found this guide on WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and web traffic generation helpful.
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