In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Website Generation
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section explores ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation using plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will show in their search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages 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 SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up your own social community on WordPress.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up and run your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a third party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving engagement with your users
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared around with others
A proven way to entice your visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This can be a useful report, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Readers can send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces 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
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to add multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your website also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Customers can better plan their visits or appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some popular 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
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using Plugins
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with a number of customizable features. 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 specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing speed, text, colours, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin lets your users calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for calculating auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of your invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
You can add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, view 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
The plugin supports different 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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best themes themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize this theme through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This inexpensive theme has a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework developed specifically for accounting businesses. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, various color choices, is easy to use, search optimized, and is 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 plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Visit the theme site to learn more about this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This theme was built to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to make your accounting business site look professional without 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their web pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include audio player, blurb, contact form, email optin, image, map, post title, pricing table, tabs, video, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is responsive and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium WordPress theme from Elegant Themes was specifically created to make corporate websites look good.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six unique 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 all professional themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically built to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. Adviser 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.
Visit this website to learn more about using this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium theme was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services professionally and help build your professional reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
Finance Business was developed specifically for organizations that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
More info:
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, this comprehensive guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins and themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation.
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