In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Basic Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Tips For Improving Web Traffic
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. In this section, we discuss WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and increase traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will display in their search result pages.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available also a number of plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting or financial services site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some fantastic plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to run your own social network on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin lets you set up your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social features to your website using WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
In this section we discuss how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides many benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared with other potential customers
A proven way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide users with high value information and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. A contact form also allows visitors to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you create multiple contact forms, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website Using WordPress Plugins
Accounting WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This plugin gives you 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 For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with loads of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for automotive loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
This 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 WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also 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, quote creation, 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.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, accessing 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 Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing system, client relationship management and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – 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 client data and invoicing, tracks 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 – Invoicing)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Financial Services
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme designed 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 (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized using premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium theme for WordPress offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
Accounting 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 types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
Kathryn is built for accountants. Kathryn comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, a variety of color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more details:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to help make your accounting business website look professional while not 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 section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create any kind of professional website you want 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 anyone to understand and change the structure of their web pages without touching any code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include accordion, call to action, circle counter, divider, gallery, map, post title, slider, testimonial, toggle, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This one was specifically created to make corporate websites look good.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme was developed to help finance professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This theme was built specifically for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that provide tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Visit this website for more information about using this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
Finance Business was developed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business 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 options, color management features, animations, and lots more.
More info:
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 to improve SEO, increase user engagement and increase web traffic to your accounting business generation with plugins & themes.
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