In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve SEO, Create Better User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Site With Plugins
- A Basic Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes
Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, we explore how to improve your accounting website with WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your content posts.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will show in their search result pages.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are a number of plugins for WordPress that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below 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
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more useful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up and manage an online social community on your WordPress site, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you set up a forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
This section covers ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides you with other ways for subscribers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide them with content of high value and offer them something for free in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. Visitors can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- More convenient for site visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you add and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their visits and appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 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 Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
The plugin includes several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating automotive loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and many others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, create 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 e-mail templates, display 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 WP Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different 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 invoices, 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 – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Accounting Services
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can customize this theme by installing premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This theme offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
To learn more about this theme, visit this site:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was designed for accountants. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
For more details about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to make your accounting business website look professional 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more details:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme developed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and fast-loading.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional website you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their page without touching code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium theme was specifically designed to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six different unique color schemes, multiple page templates which 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 beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This one was developed to help those in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those 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 a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
Tax Help was designed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help establish your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Visit this site to learn more about this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for firms that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. The 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 a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
For more information, 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 comprehensive guide has helped you learn ways to improve your accounting or financial services website using WordPress plugins and themes.
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