Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress – 2

In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting business presence online, we covered the following topics:

• Challenges Accounting Services Face Online
• Online Opportunities For Accountants
• Essential Pages
• Improving The Content On Your Website

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

• Ways Of Improving Traffic With WordPress
• Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
• WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Site

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

• Adding New Functionality To Your Site With Plugins
• Themes – An Overview

Ways To Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress

Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.

Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress

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

• SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages (called posts).
• Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
• Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
• Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
• Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
• Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
• Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.

WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors To Your Website

In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.

For example, 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 your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):

• BuddyPress – Set up your own social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
• bbPress – bbPress lets you set up your own forum on your WordPress site.
• E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
• Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
• Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.

(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)

Generate New Leads & Enquiries

Let’s now take a look at ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.

Adding An Email Newsletter

Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits and advantages including:

• Sends targeted traffic
• Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
• Provides updates
• Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
• Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
• Provides regular opportunities for improving interaction
• Provides you with an additional way for readers to share your content

An effective way to entice visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide users with content of high value and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.

Contact Forms

Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. A contact form also lets visitors report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.

Contact forms provide many benefits, like:

• Reduces spam
• Automated response
• Giving you control over what gets sent to you
• You can keep your email address private
• Different forms can be added to any page or post
• Looks professional
• Convenience for visitors

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

Contact Form 7

(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)

This free plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.

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

Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can select which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.

Provide Maps

A map helps your visitors and clients find you.

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

• A map increases local SEO
• Visitors can easily find you
• Show location of events

(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients 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

WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation

WordPress Plugins

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

Calculator Pro Calculators

(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)

This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization

Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:

• Interest rate
• Payments
• CD
• Debit
• And many more

For more details, go here}:

• Calculators Pro Plugin For WordPress

Show Stock Quotes

(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)

This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.

(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)

For more details, go here}:

• Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin

Custom Stock Ticker

(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)

With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.

This plugin comes with several customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.

Customize the appearance by changing colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.

For more details, go here}:

• Custom Stock Ticker

Finance Calculator

(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)

This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for car loans, property, or other large loans.

(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)

Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification 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}:

• Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin

WP-Invoice

(WP-Invoice – WordPress Plugin)

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

This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It also 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, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.

The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.

The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, 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, ten 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 – WordPress Plugin)

This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticketing system, CRM and many additional features.

(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoicing)

All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, and more.

For more details, go here}:

• All In One Business Management Application

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 Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)

It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.

For more details, go here}:

• iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress

WordPress Financial Themes

To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. With these themes you can own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.

Accounting Pro

(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)

This premium theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.

Accounting Pro can be customized by installing premium add-ons.

Go here for more info:

• Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress

Accountancy

(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)

This premium theme has a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.

It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy Theme provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.

For more details, go here:

• Accountancy WordPress Theme

Accounting

(Accounting)

This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.

More info:

• Accounting Theme

Kathryn

(Kathryn)

Kathryn is created for accounting businesses. The theme comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.

More information:

• Kathryn

Accounting WordPress Theme

(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)

This theme was designed to exude 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 site look professional while not 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.

Visit this site to learn more this WordPress theme:

• Accounting WordPress Theme WordPress Premium Theme

WP Advocate

(WP Advocate WP Theme)

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

More information:

• WP Advocate

Divi

(Divi Theme)

Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.

Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their web pages without editing code.

(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)

It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.

Visit the theme site to learn more about this theme:

• Divi WordPress Theme

The Corporation

(The Corporation WP Theme)

This premium WordPress theme was specifically developed to make corporate sites look good.

This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six 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 access to 80+ sleek business themes.

For more information, go here:

• The Corporation – WordPress Theme

Adviser

(Adviser Theme For WordPress)

Adviser was built to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investments or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..

Go here to learn more about this theme:

• Adviser WordPress Theme

Tax Help

(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)

This premium theme was designed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to help grow your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.

Go here for more details:

• Tax Help

Finance Business

(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)

This theme was built for organizations that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a whole lot more.

Go here to learn more about this theme:

• Finance Business – 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 comprehensive guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins and themes that can improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your accounting site.

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