In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Basic Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your WordPress Blog With Plugins
- WordPress Themes – An Overview
Improving Web Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will display in their search result pages.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available dozens of plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- 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 your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are a few powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to set up your own social network on your website.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress plugin to set up and manage your own online forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social sharing features to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving engagement with your users
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared with others
An effective way to attract subscribers is to provide users with high value content and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Contact forms also allow readers to provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to create multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so visitors can select which topic they are contacting you about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Map
Adding maps 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 your office easily
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
Accounting WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- CD
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
The plugin offers several customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customizations include colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets your users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out 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, create quotes, create 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, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and others.
You can add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, display 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 WordPress Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticket system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as 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 customers, 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)
iBilling lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme created for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded through premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to 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 fully responsive. Accountancy provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more information about this WordPress theme:
Accounting
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Visit the theme website to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically for accounting services. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and offers multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search engine friendly, and is responsive. Although it 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.
For more details, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
Accounting WordPress Theme was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to give your accounting website 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional site you want using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as accordion, blog, circle counter, countdown timer, image, login, portfolio, shop, tabs, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
The Corporation Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to make corporate websites look great.
It has a page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to all stunning themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was specifically developed to help finance industry professionals 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 multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This one was built for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those providing tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services professionally 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.
To learn more about about this theme, visit the theme website:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This one was built for organizations 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 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
Go here for more details:
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, you have found this guide on ways of improving your business online using WordPress themes and plugins useful.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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