In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Blog’s Functionality
- WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section explores ways of improving your accounting or financial services business online with WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins for WordPress that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
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
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Run an online community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- 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 increasing user interaction
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared around with others
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value information and give users additional bonuses for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to report concerns, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms on your site, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective customers can select the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are a very useful tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office more easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins And Themes
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Leases
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize it yourself to match your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, background color, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great tool for auto loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, 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)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticket system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
The plugin supports international 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 Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting. With the themes listed below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize this theme through premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
Accountancy offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps 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 engine optimized, and fast loading. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme for WordPress was created specifically for accounting businesses. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search engine optimized, 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 plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to help make your accounting website look professional without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create any type of professional website you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 professional themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This theme was created specifically to create good-looking corporate sites.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six different color schemes, multiple page templates that 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 over 80 themes.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This one was specifically built to help finance industry professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investment advice or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit the theme website for more information about this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This one was designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses providing tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help build your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for organizations that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a 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
We hope that you have found this comprehensive guide on how to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic with plugins helpful.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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