Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress – 2

In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:

• Online Challenges For Accountants
• Opportunities For Professional Accountants
• Improve Your Web Pages
• How To Improve Your Web Content

In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:

• Tips For Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
• Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
• WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation

To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:

• Using WP Plugins To Extend Your Site’s Capability
• WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes

Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site

Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section, you will learn ways of improving your accounting website using WordPress plugins and themes.

Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)

There are many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:

• SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
• Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
• Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
• Post Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
• Images – title images with keywords for better search results.
• Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts on your site
• Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.

Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins

As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available quite a number of plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.

Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:

• All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
• Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
• WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)

(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)

Other ways to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):

• BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run a social community on your WordPress website.
• bbPress – Use this free plugin to set up your own online community forum on your website.
• E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
• Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
• Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your site.

(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)

Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications

This section covers ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your business.

Adding An Email Newsletter

Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits, like:

• Drives targeted traffic
• Keeps readers from forgetting about you
• Provides useful updates
• Provides a targeted marketing channel
• It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
• Increases interaction
• Provides you with another way for your content to be shared around with other potential customers

An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide high value information and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.

Contact Forms

A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Visitors can report issues, contact specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.

Contact forms provide a number of benefits including:

• Reduces spam
• Automated response
• Giving you control over what is sent to you
• Allows you to keep your email address private
• Can be added to any page or post
• Looks professional
• More convenient for visitors

One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.

Contact Form 7

(Contact Form 7 Plugin)

Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.

International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.

Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which topic they are contacting you about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.

Adding A Map

Maps help your visitors and clients find you.

Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your WordPress site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:

• They increase local SEO
• Visitors can easily find you
• Display location of events

(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers 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

Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins & Themes

Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Plugins

WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:

Calculator Pro Calculators

(Calculator Pro Calculators)

This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these 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 for:

• Interest rate
• Loans
• CD
• Debit
• And lots more

For more details, go here}:

• Calculators Pro Plugin For WordPress

Show Stock Quotes

(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)

This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.

(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)

For more details, go here}:

• Show Stock Quotes

Custom Stock Ticker

(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)

This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.

The plugin comes with several customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.

Appearance customization features include colors, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• Custom Stock Ticker

Finance Calculator

(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)

This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating repayments on car loans, property loans, or any other large loan.

(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)

Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.

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}:

• Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin

WP-Invoice

(WP-Invoice Plugin)

WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.

WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients 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 WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and many others.

WP-Invoice lets you 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 email notification templates, display reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, valuable clients and top grossing line items), and more.

For more details, go here}:

• WP-Invoice

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 ticket management system, CRM and many additional features.

(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)

The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.

For more details, go here}:

• All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress

iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software

(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin)

This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.

(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)

iBilling integrates with several payment gateways.

For more details, go here}:

• iBilling – WordPress Plugin

Financial WordPress Themes

To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting businesses. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.

Accounting Pro

(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)

This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.

You can customize Accounting Pro with premium add-ons.

To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:

• Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress

Accountancy

(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)

This theme offers a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.

This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and loads fast. Accountancy provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with your purchase.

For more information, go here:

• Accountancy

Accounting

(Accounting Theme For WordPress)

This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.

More info:

• Accounting Theme For WordPress

Kathryn

(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)

This premium theme for WordPress was created specifically for accounting businesses. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy responsive slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.

More information:

• Kathryn Theme

Accounting WordPress Theme

(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)

This one was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to give your accounting business website a professional look without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s mobile-friendly and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.

To learn more about this theme, visit this website:

• Accounting WordPress Theme

WP Advocate

(WP Advocate)

WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.

More info:

• WP Advocate Theme For WordPress

Divi

(Divi)

Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional website you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.

The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their web pages without editing code.

(Divi – Page Builder)

It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is responsive and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.

More information:

• Divi WordPress Theme

The Corporation

(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)

This one was specifically created to make corporate websites look good.

This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six different unique color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.

More info:

• The Corporation – WordPress Theme

Adviser

(Adviser WP Theme)

This theme was specifically built to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. 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.

Go here for more details:

• Adviser

Tax Help

(Tax Help Theme)

This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those that provide tax services. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way and help grow your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.

Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:

• Tax Help Theme For WordPress

Finance Business

(Finance Business WP Theme)

This theme was specifically built for firms that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management, animated elements, and a whole lot more.

More info:

• Finance Business Theme

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 article has helped you learn WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and traffic generation.

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