In Part One of this comprehensive guide on ways to grow your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting Businesses Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Blog With Plugins
- WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of Themes
Your Accounting Website – Improve Your Business Online With WordPress Themes And Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few fantastic plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to set up your own social community on your site, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up and run a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a third party subscription.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social sharing features on your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for enticing your visitors to subscribe is to provide users with valuable information and give them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch. A contact form also lets users provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature you may want to consider is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select which department they want to contact. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Clients can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some 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
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins For Accountants
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
This plugin provides loads of customizable features. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, background color, opacity, scrolling speed, number of stocks displayed at one time, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets your users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create 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.
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, quoting, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification 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 Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticket system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
The plugin 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, 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 Plugin – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting 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 themes themes available for accounting firms. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
For more information, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
Accountancy Theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and one year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This one is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework created specifically for accountants. It provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, many colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive (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 slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This theme was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to help make your accounting site look professional while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Divi
(Divi)
Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional site using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and edit the structure of their pages without touching any code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has bar counter, call to action, circle counter, divider, gallery, number counter, portfolio, slider, testimonial, toggle, fullwidth header, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 professional themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress from Elegant Themes was developed specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, 6 unique color schemes, 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 80+ stunning themes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit this site for more information about this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was designed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally to help build your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This theme was built for firms that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a lot more.
More information:
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 comprehensive guide on ways to improve SEO, improve user engagement and increase traffic generation using plugins & themes useful.
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