In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Site’s Features And Functionality
- A Newbie’s Guide To Themes
Improving Website Traffic
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Set up your own social network on WordPress.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run a forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared with new potential customers
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide users with high value information and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. A contact form also allows readers to raise concerns, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and configure and lets you insert multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can select which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits and appointments
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some popular 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 For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
The plugin includes several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scroll speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a great financial tool for calculating automotive loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator 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 lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF invoice versions, 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, accessing 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, 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 – Client Invoicing)
iBilling integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With the themes listed below you can 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)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, 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 customized by installing premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress offers a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and one year of support.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is built specifically for accountants. The theme offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, a variety of colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is mobile-friendly. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This premium theme was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to give your accounting site a professional look. 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 services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any kind of professional website you want using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without touching any code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include audio player, blurb, contact form, divider, image, number counter, portfolio, shop, testimonial, toggle, fullwidth image, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium theme from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to make corporate websites look great.
The Corporation 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 comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 professional themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was built to help finance professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This one was developed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those that offer tax services. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way and help build your professional reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more details, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and a whole lot more.
Visit the theme website to learn more about this 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
We hope that you have found this article on WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, better user engagement and driving more visitors to your site helpful.
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