In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting And Financial Businesses Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- 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:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, better user engagement and driving more traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of WordPress plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use BuddyPress to run your own online social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Set up your own discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you 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 with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a useful report, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Contact forms also allow visitors to report concerns, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another feature to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Customers can better plan their visits and appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, 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:
- 401k
- Payments
- CD
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress 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 like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin comes with a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating vehicle loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
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)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and several others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create email 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 Plugin)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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 customer data and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
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 businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting firms. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand Accounting Pro using premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium theme for WordPress has a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The cost of purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was developed for accountants. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully responsive. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to help give your accounting site a professional look. 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 a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their web pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 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 over 80 professional themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to make corporate websites look great.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, 6 unique different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all sleek business themes.
For more information, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
The Adviser Theme was developed to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more information, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. It’s designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the 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)
Finance Business was developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
Go here for more details about using this WordPress 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 guide has helped you learn how to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic with plugins.
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