In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Functionality To Your Website With WordPress Plugins
- A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding Themes
Tips For Improving Website Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better indexing of pages
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available various plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin lets you set up and manage a social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Set up your own community forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – This WordPress plugin lets you add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
This section covers how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with additional ways for subscribers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide users with high value content and offer them a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Contact forms also allow users to report issues, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving 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
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for site visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create multiple contact forms, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another option to consider is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can select the topic they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are just some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
Accounting WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- CD
- Debit
- And 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 show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes several customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, font size, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for automotive loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
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 WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates 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 that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress 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 lets you add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, display 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with ticketing management system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customers and invoices, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster by integrating 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 for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. With the themes listed below you can have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can expand this theme through premium add-ons.
Visit this website to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
Accountancy Theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to 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. It provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with your purchase.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for accounting services. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search engine friendly, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit 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.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements designed specifically to give your accounting business website a professional look. 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 CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a corporate theme developed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create a unique, professional site using the page builder or beautiful 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 redesign the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include accordion, blog, code, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, login, person, sidebar, tabs, video, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 themes.
Visit the theme website to learn more this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
The Corporation WordPress Theme was designed specifically to make corporate websites look good.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, 6 unique different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 sleek business themes.
Go here for more information:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This theme was designed specifically to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help build 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 many custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically developed for organizations that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, and a whole lot more.
Go here for more details:
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 ways of improving SEO, improve user engagement and drive more visitors using plugins useful.
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