In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting business online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting And Financial Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and web traffic generation.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available also a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run a social networking community on your website, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin helps you set up and run your own community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons on your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. It provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides an additional way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide them with valuable content and give them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to contact you. A contact form also lets visitors report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms on your website, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their meeting or appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Financial WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website to immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Tax
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin provides loads of customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin allows your users to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for car loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
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 forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out 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 invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, access 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded through premium add-ons.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy Theme provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting 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 header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
For more details, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for accounting businesses. The theme offers 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, SEO friendly, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements specifically designed to give your accounting website a professional look without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the 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 and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create a professional site using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has audio player, blog, contact form, email optin, gallery, login, person, shop, tabs, video slider, fullwidth image, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
Visit this site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium theme was created specifically to create good-looking corporate websites.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 unique different color schemes, 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 80+ stunning themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust online through clean web design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. The 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.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
Tax Help was developed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses offering tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally to help grow your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically for firms that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots 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 ways of improving SEO, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation using plugins useful.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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