In Part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- Improving Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Website
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To Themes
Improving Traffic
Web traffic is an important part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO With WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your web pages
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many WordPress plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more powerful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin lets you set up a social networking community on your site, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin helps you set up a discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this WordPress plugin to add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we will show you ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides another way for your content to be shared around with other potential clients
An effective way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide users with content of high value and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. Contact forms also let users report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives 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
- Convenient for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This plugin allows you to create multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize your 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.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select the topic they want to discuss. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your website also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your site to immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, text color, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator lets users calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for car loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It even 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 from clients, create PDF invoice versions, provide quotes, create 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, view 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticketing management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can have 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 is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, 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 information about this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
Accountancy has a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and fast loading. It provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Go here for more details:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically for accounting businesses. It provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search engine friendly, 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 info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is designed specifically to help 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 fully responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a corporate theme built for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Divi
(Divi)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 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. Divi is responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
Go here to learn more this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
The Corporation was built specifically to create good-looking corporate websites.
The Corporation has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It has six color schemes. It also comes with 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 sleek business themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme was developed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investments or tax help. It 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.
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was built specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help build your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This theme was built specifically for firms that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, 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 comprehensive guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins and themes for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and web traffic generation.
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