In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy
- Essential Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Tips For Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will show in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic 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 and posts for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use BuddyPress to run your own online social network on WordPress.
- bbPress – bbPress allows you to run your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Use this plugin to add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we’ll show you how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared online with new prospective clients
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value content and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. A contact form also allows users to raise concerns, contact specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact Form 7 allows you to create multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can select which topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your website also provides users with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the more popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Accounting Services Website Generation With WordPress Plugins And Themes
Accounting WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site to immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin gives you a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes a number of customizable features. You can choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, font size, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, viewing 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, notice board, 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 cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting businesses. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has 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 customize this theme through premium add-ons.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
Accountancy offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps 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 loads fast. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
To learn more about this theme, visit this website:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
Kathryn is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework created specifically for accountants. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is 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 must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Visit this site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements designed specifically to help give your accounting business site a professional look without 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Visit this site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create any type of professional site you want using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all professional themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
The Corporation Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to create good-looking corporate sites.
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. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ professional themes.
For more information, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This theme was specifically designed to help those in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This one was designed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that offer tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services in a professional way to help grow 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 many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium theme was specifically designed for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
For more details, go here:
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 and themes that improve SEO, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation helpful.
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