In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Web Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving Your Business Online With WordPress Plugins and Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores WordPress plugins that can improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available many plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress allows you to set up your own social networking community on your site, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to run your own discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries
This section explains how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides many benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving engaging with your users
- Provides another way for your content to be shared with others
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets readers report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces 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
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 allows you to create multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Add A Map
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help Improve Your SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add 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 For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This free plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
The plugin provides several customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customizations include speed, symbols, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for car loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
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 Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
This plugin 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, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, access 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage clients and invoices, 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}:
WordPress Themes - Accounting And Financial Services
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. With these themes you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily customize Accounting Pro using premium add-ons.
For more details about using this theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium WordPress theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with the cost of purchasing.
Go here for more information:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting 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 types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Visit the theme website to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is created specifically for accountants. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine 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 plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and redesign the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include bar counter, call to action, contact form, email optin, gallery, map, person, sidebar, social media follow, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 professional themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
The Corporation WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to make corporate sites look great.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also comes with 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 over 80 sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was specifically built to help those in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit this website to learn more this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This theme was specifically developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses providing tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services in a professional way and help establish your business 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.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
Finance Business WordPress Theme was built for businesses that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
Visit the theme website for more information about 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, you have found this article on how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors using WordPress plugins helpful.
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