In Part One of this step-by-step article on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your articles and posts.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images used in your content 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 on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up a social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Run your own online discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user engagement
- Provides you with additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be an exclusive guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Users can provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This plugin allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can choose the topic they want to discuss. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their visits and appointments
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Tax
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
This plugin includes a number of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, scrolling speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great financial tool for vehicle loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create 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 WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of your invoices, provide quotes, create 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, viewing 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 WP Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, notice board, 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 and communicate with customers, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoice)
iBilling integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes below you can have a professional-looking 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 is an inexpensive turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, 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 through premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This one has a variety of built-in styles and layouts to make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and fully responsive. Accountancy Theme provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accounting
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium theme was developed for accountants. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, flexible rotator, many color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme could easily suit any profession, 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.
Visit the theme website for more details about using this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting 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., was specifically designed to make your accounting website 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 services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any type of professional site you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their web pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi 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. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
For more details about this WordPress theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to make corporate websites look great.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, 6 different unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ sleek business themes.
For more information, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This one was developed to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax help. 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.
To learn more about this theme, visit this site:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was designed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax assistance. This theme 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 additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for organizations that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a lot more.
For more details, 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 comprehensive guide has helped you learn ways of improving SEO, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your accounting or financial services site with WordPress plugins.
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