In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Professionals
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Your Accounting Website – Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, we discuss how to improve your accounting website with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Site For SEO Using WordPress
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will display in their search result pages.
- Images – title your 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
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress 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 WordPress tools you can add to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you set up and manage your own social community on WordPress.
- bbPress – bbPress helps you set up and manage a forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we discuss how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides an additional way for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value information and give users something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Visitors can provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- More convenient for users
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact Form 7 lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their visits and appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- CD
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides several 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 create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colours, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator allows users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating auto loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
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 lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoice versions, create quotes, create 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, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, viewing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting 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 businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily customize this theme through premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This one comes with a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
For more details about using this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress 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 admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme was developed for accounting services. The theme provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, various color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, and is responsive. Although this theme can easily fit any profession you like, 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.
For more information, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created 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 business 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 services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and fast-loading.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any kind of professional site you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has bar counter, blurb, circle counter, countdown timer, image, login, person, pricing table, testimonial, video slider, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created specifically to make corporate websites look great.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 unique color schemes, multiple page templates that 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 professional themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme was specifically built to help finance industry professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investment advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This one was developed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those providing tax services. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed specifically for organizations that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. It 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 features, animations, and a lot more.
Go here for more details about using this 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, you have found this guide on WordPress plugins & themes that can improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation helpful.
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