In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- Essential Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available dozens of plugins that improve SEO, increase 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
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up a social community on WordPress, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress plugin to set up and run a community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Add powerful social sharing features to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
This section looks at how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engaging with your users
- Provides you with other ways for your content to be shared online with others
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide users with valuable content and offer them additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to contact you. Contact forms also let visitors report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins - Accounting And Financial Services
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. The plugin also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customization features include size, text, colours, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin allows users to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating automotive loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, 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.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, view reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple 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 WP 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 Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking 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 accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand this theme through premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, fast loading, and is responsive. It provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included in your purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This one is a child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s created for accounting services. Kathryn provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, search optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed 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 responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This premium theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include accordion, blog, contact form, divider, gallery, number counter, post title, slider, testimonial, video, fullwidth code, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all sleek business themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed to create good-looking corporate sites.
It has a page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, 6 different unique color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 stunning themes.
To learn more about this theme, visit this site:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This theme was specifically designed to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those that provide tax services. The theme is designed to showcase your services professionally to help establish your business reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
Finance Business WordPress Theme was built specifically for firms that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a lot more.
Visit the theme website to learn more this theme:
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 guide has helped you learn WordPress plugins & themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase visitors to your site generation.
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