In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Basic Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- How To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins And Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section discusses ways of improving SEO, improve user engagement and generate more visitors using WordPress plugins.
Optimize Your Website For SEO With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available various plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you set up and manage a discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a third party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing user interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared with new prospective customers
An effective way to entice visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide users with high value content and offer them something for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets visitors report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 lets you create multiple contact forms, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach 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:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your site 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
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site With WordPress Plugins
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, size, symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out 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, create 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many 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, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, access 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like 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 and communicate with clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting businesses. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has 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, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
Accountancy Theme offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy Theme provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium WordPress theme was created for accounting services. The theme comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, various color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit 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 information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to give your accounting site a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s mobile-friendly and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a professional site using the page builder or 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 easily redesign the structure of their pages without editing code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include audio player, blog, contact form, countdown timer, image, number counter, post title, shop, social media follow, text, fullwidth image, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme from Elegant Themes was specifically built to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has 6 color schemes. It also has 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 80+ themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
The Adviser WordPress Theme was specifically designed to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investments or tax help. 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.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was designed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help build your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more details about using this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This theme was specifically developed for firms that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and a lot more.
Visit this website to learn more this WordPress 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 ways of improving your accounting or financial services business online with WordPress themes and plugins.
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