In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors Using Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section discusses how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your accounting site with plugins.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of WordPress plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few more useful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Run an online social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress helps you run your own discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Easily add powerful social sharing features to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends 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 targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides an additional way for your content to be shared with other potential customers
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide them with valuable information and offer them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows visitors to provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so users can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- 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
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website to immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show 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 Plugin)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
The plugin comes with several customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating repayments on car loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send 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 a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, accessing 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 ticketing system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)
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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Client Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes below you can own a professional 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 for WordPress is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This one is built for accounting services. It has a slider, multiple layouts, 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, search optimized, and is responsive. Although it can easily fit 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.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to give your accounting business site a professional look 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more information about using this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. 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. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their page without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium WordPress theme from Elegant Themes was built specifically to make corporate sites look good.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also comes with 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 all stunning themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically developed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This theme was specifically built for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms that offer tax services. The theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help establish your professional reputation. It provides 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 to learn more this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for organizations that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, 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 the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
Go here for 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
We hope that you have found this comprehensive guide on ways of improving SEO, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic with plugins & themes useful.
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