In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Accountants
- Improve Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to run your own social networking community on your WordPress website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to set up and manage your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s discuss now ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Add An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with additional ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. A contact form also lets users report problems, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing 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 post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- More convenient for site visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can choose which topic they are contacting you about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site With WordPress Plugins And Themes
WordPress Plugins - Accountants
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- 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 shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes several customizable features. 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 height, width, background color, scrolling speed, 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)
This free calculator lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for calculating repayments on car loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, 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, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, creating 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, displaying 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, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial 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. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes below you can own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, 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 with premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
Accountancy Theme offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Visit the theme website to learn more about this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s created for accountants. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme can easily fit 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.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to help give your accounting site a professional look without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more details:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme built specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and fast-loading.
For more information about using this theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a professional site using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their page without editing a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi 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 mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all stunning themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was specifically designed to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with six color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
Adviser was specifically designed to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investment advice or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This one was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help grow your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically developed for firms that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
More information:
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 article has helped you learn WordPress plugins and themes for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and driving more visitors.
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