In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Generating New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins And Themes That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Improving Website Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. In this section, we explore WordPress plugins that can improve SEO, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your accounting website.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up your own social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to set up a forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add powerful social sharing features to your website.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries
This section explains ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for interaction
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared online with others
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe is to provide users with valuable content and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows visitors to report issues, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing 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
- Convenient for users
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free contact form plugin lets you add and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Maps
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your website also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress makes available 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 your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Leases
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin offers loads of customizable ticker. 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 individual categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, font family, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for automotive loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification 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)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoice versions, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
You can add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, display 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 Plugin)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
It integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Accountants
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With these themes you can have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This premium theme has a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in the cost of purchasing.
Visit this website to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme was created specifically for accountants. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine 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 plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to help 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 mobile-friendly and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built specifically 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 for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more info:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create any type of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation WordPress Theme was specifically built to make corporate websites look great.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has 6 color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
Adviser was developed to help those in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
Tax Help was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and those that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
Finance Business Theme was built specifically for firms that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a lot more.
More info:
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 comprehensive guide on WordPress plugins for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and generating more visitors helpful.
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