In Part 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting business online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting And Financial Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic
- How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Site With Plugins
- A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding Themes
Online Business Tips For Accountants – How To Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress Themes And Plugins
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins that can help improve SEO, increase user engagement and increase web traffic to your business generation.
Optimizing Your Website For 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 web address of your pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run a social network on your site, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
This section looks at how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides many benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with users
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared online with new prospective customers
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value information and give users additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. A contact form also allows visitors to provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for site visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is to segment your contact form so visitors can select which topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map Integration
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Clients can better plan their meeting or appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
Accounting – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
The plugin offers a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include speed, symbols, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful tool for calculating auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include showing 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.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and several others.
You can add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, access reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 For WordPress)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticket system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional 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 WP Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, 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 – Client Invoice)
It allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accounting themes available. With the themes listed below you can own 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 is a turn-key theme created 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-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded by installing premium add-ons.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
Accountancy comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy Theme provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting 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, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed for accounting businesses. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, various color choices, is easy to use, SEO friendly, and is fully 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 must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is designed specifically to 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 responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more details about using this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a free corporate theme designed 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 staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Divi
(Divi)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their page without editing any code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include accordion, call to action, circle counter, divider, filterable portfolio, map, person, sidebar, tabs, video slider, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all beautifully-designed themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one from Elegant Themes was specifically built to create good-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which 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 professional themes.
Visit this site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically designed to help those in the financial industry to build trust online through clean web design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investment advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Visit this site to learn more this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax assistance. It’s designed to showcase 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 additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more details about using this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
For more information, go here:
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 WordPress plugins that can improve SEO, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic.
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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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