Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress – 2

In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:

• Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
• Online Opportunities For Accountants
• Your Website Pages
• Ways To Improve Your Web Content

In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:

• How To Improve Traffic
• How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
• Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins

To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:

• WordPress Plugins – Enhance Your Site’s Capabilities
• WP Themes – An Introduction

How To Improve Web Traffic

Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section, we discuss how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase traffic to your business generation using plugins.

Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress

There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:

• URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
• Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
• Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
• Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
• Images – title images with keywords for better search engine results.
• Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
• Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.

Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With Plugins

As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.

Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:

• Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
• Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
• WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin

(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO)

Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):

• BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to set up your own social community on your WordPress website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
• bbPress – Set up your own forum on WordPress.
• E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without a third party subscription.
• Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
• Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social sharing features on your pages and posts.

(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)

Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress

In this section we’ll show you how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.

Add An Email Newsletter

Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages, like:

• Sends targeted traffic to your site
• Keeps readers from forgetting about you
• Provides useful updates
• Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
• It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
• Provides regular opportunities for interaction
• Provides another way for your content to be shared online with others

An effective strategy for attracting subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide users with valuable content and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.

Contact Forms

Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Contact forms also let visitors report issues, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions and more.

A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:

• Reduces spam
• Set up automated responses
• Giving you control over what is sent to you
• You can keep your email address private
• Can be added to any post or page
• Looks professional
• More convenient for visitors

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

Contact Form 7

(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)

This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.

Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.

Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can select the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.

Provide Maps

Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.

Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your site also provides many benefits, such as:

• Maps improve local SEO
• Visitors can easily find you
• Display location of events

(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)

Here are just some 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

WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation

WordPress Plugins

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

Calculator Pro Calculators

(Calculator Pro Calculators)

This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization

Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:

• Interest rate
• Rate of return
• Leases
• Credit
• And lots more

For more details, go here}:

• Calculators Pro

Show Stock Quotes

(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)

This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.

(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)

For more details, go here}:

• Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress

Custom Stock Ticker

(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)

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

This plugin offers loads of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.

Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, font family, font size, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin

Finance Calculator

(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)

This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property, or other large loans.

(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)

The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.

It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create forms that can be placed in any page or post.

For more details, go here}:

• Finance Calculator

WP-Invoice

(WP-Invoice Plugin For WordPress)

WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.

WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, checkout forms, and more.

The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of 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, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, viewing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 most 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.

(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Invoice)

All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, to do app, 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 Plugin For WordPress)

iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.

(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoice)

iBilling allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.

For more details, go here}:

• iBilling WP Plugin

Financial Themes For WordPress

To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a look at 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 web design.

Accounting Pro

(Accounting Pro Theme)

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

You can customize Accounting Pro with premium add-ons.

Go here for more details:

• Accounting Pro WordPress Theme

Accountancy

(Accountancy WordPress Theme)

This inexpensive theme has a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.

This responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with your purchase.

Go here for more details:

• Accountancy

Accounting

(Accounting – WordPress Theme)

This 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 header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.

Visit this site to learn more about using this theme:

• Accounting WordPress Theme

Kathryn

(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)

This premium theme was built for accounting businesses. The theme provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, SEO friendly, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit any profession, 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.

Go here to learn more about this WordPress theme:

• Kathryn WP Theme

Accounting WordPress Theme

(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)

This premium WordPress theme was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to make your accounting site look professional while not 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.

More information:

• Accounting WordPress Theme

WP Advocate

(WP Advocate Theme)

WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed specifically for professional service providers 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. It’s clean and loads fast.

For more details, go here:

• WP Advocate – WordPress Theme

Divi

(Divi Theme)

This premium theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create a unique, professional site using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.

The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their page without editing a single line of code.

(Divi WP Theme – Flexible Page Builder)

Divi comes with 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 responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ stunning themes.

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

• Divi Theme

The Corporation

(The Corporation WP Theme)

This premium WordPress theme was built specifically to create good-looking corporate sites.

This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has 6  color schemes. It also comes with 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 80+ beautifully-designed themes.

More information:

• The Corporation Theme

Adviser

(Adviser Theme)

Adviser was specifically developed to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing or tax help. 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..

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

• Adviser – WordPress Theme

Tax Help

(Tax Help WP Theme)

This premium theme was specifically built for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and businesses providing tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services in a professional way and help build your professional reputation. It has different 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:

• Tax Help WordPress Theme

Finance Business

(Finance Business Theme)

This premium theme was developed specifically for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and a lot more.

For more information, go here:

• Finance Business

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 ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation using WordPress plugins.

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