In Part 1 of this comprehensive article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting Businesses Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Functionality To Your WordPress Web Site With Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Improving Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO With WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of your content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase 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 XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to set up and run a social community on your site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin can be used to set up a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we’ll discuss ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Add A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for your content to be shared with others
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a handy guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Users can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Is convenient for site visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so users can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more 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 Drive More Visitors With WordPress Plugins & Themes
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include colors, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets users calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for car loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
It will display 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also 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 versions of your invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP 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, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, access 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized by installing premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, SEO friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. It provides what 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 for more details:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting 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 header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Visit this site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
Kathryn is built for accounting services. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color choices, is easy to use, search 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.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements 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 (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here to learn more about this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without touching any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. 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 access to all stunning themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
The Corporation was specifically created to make corporate sites look good.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all themes.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically to help finance professionals build trust online through clean web 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. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
For more details about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was developed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax services. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally to help grow your professional reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more information about this theme, visit this site:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was designed specifically for businesses that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
Go here for 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 guide has helped you learn how to improve your accounting business online using WordPress.
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