In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic
- How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Business Generation Using Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your WP Blog With Plugins
- WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Your Accounting Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section, we discuss WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search 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 (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available dozens of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can use 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 (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use BuddyPress to set up and manage a social network on your site.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up and run your own online community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Easily add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving engagement with your users
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to attract subscribers is to provide them with valuable information and give them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive report, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Visitors can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and configure and lets you add multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the 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 adding sections to your contact form so users can select the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are great tools for several reasons:
- They increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are just some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Your SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site to immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Leases
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This plugin installs 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 WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides loads of customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, speed, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for calculating car loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification 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 WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, 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.
You can add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, access reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 knowledgebase and ticketing system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional 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 WP Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, tracks 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 – Client Invoicing)
iBilling lets you get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, 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 accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded by installing premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy Theme provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included in the cost of purchasing.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is developed for accountants. It comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, various color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive. Although this theme can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider 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 – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements designed specifically to help 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 fully responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any style of professional site you want using its page builder or 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 a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include bar counter, blog, contact form, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, login, portfolio, shop, tabs, video slider, fullwidth header, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all themes.
Go here for more details:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically built to create good-looking corporate websites.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investments or tax advice. The Adviser 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..
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
Tax Help Theme was specifically built for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those providing tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically developed for firms that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
More info:
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 guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins for improving SEO, better user engagement and web traffic generation.
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