In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to build your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting Businesses Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Online Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Your web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of your content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more useful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up a social networking community on your website.
- bbPress – Run your own online forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this plugin to add powerful social sharing features to your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s discuss now ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. It provides several benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for readers to share your content
An effective way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and give users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also lets users send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- More convenient for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another feature to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the more popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
WordPress Accounting Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting 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 these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- CD
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin gives you a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios 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 add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating auto loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
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 you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
You can add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, view 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
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 client data and invoicing, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, 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 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 suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes listed below you can own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
You can easily expand Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This theme offers a variety of built-in 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, SEO friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This one is developed specifically for accountants. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, various color choices, is easy to use, search optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme could easily suit any profession, 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.
Visit this site to learn more this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to 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 mobile-friendly and includes pages for your services, contact details 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 corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s 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. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more info:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create a professional site using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include 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 access to over 80 stunning themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This one was specifically built to make corporate websites look good.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, 6 unique different 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 access to over 80 professional themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was built specifically to help those in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing or tax help. The theme 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.
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
Tax Help was designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms providing tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services professionally and help establish your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically developed for organizations that provide financial services such as 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 includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, and a lot more.
To learn more about this 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, this guide has helped you learn ways of improving your accounting business online with WordPress themes and plugins.
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