In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will show in their search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of your web content
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve your site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress lets you run your own social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress plugin to set up and run a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s take a look now at ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for engagement with your users
- Provides other ways for subscribers to share your content
A proven way to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value content and give users something for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to contact you. Users can report issues, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- More convenient for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can select the topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Clients can better plan their visits or appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some popular 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 For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website to immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Leases
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This free plugin gives you a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin includes loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customization features include size, text, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets your users calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for car loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of 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 others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, accessing 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 For WordPress)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress 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 – Invoicing)
It allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Pro is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
Visit the theme website to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This inexpensive theme offers a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, fast loading, and fully responsive. It 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 your purchase.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was designed for accountants. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various colors, is easy to use, search engine friendly, and is fully responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more details:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme 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 designed specifically 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 fully responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean-looking and fast-loading.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a professional site using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more details about this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built to create great-looking corporate websites.
It has a page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, six different color schemes, 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 professional themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
Adviser was built to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms providing tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to help establish your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Visit this website for more information about this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This premium theme was specifically designed for organizations that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and lots more.
For more information about using this WordPress theme, 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, you have found this article on WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and generating more visitors useful.
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