In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- How To Improve Traffic
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WP Plugins – Enhancing Your Website’s Capability
- WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To WP Themes
Ways Of Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your articles and posts.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting or financial services site’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Run your own social network on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up an online forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user interaction
- Provides other ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to get your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide users with information of high value and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. A contact form also allows users to send feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements 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
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for site visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to add multiple contact forms to your website, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they are contacting your company about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Map
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some of the more popular 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
WordPress Plugins That Improve Your SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
WordPress Plugins For Accounting
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Leases
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with several customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scroll speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, text color, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating auto loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.
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 you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoice versions, 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, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, viewing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 For WordPress)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like 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 customer data and invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
It allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, 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 is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded by installing premium add-ons.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
Accountancy has a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration 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.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for accounting businesses. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to help make your accounting 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 (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme built for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional website you want using its page builder or beautiful 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 edit the structure of their page without editing any code.
(Divi WP Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as audio player, blog, contact form, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, map, person, slider, testimonial, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all stunning themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This theme was created specifically to make corporate websites look great.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, six unique color schemes, 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 over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
Visit this site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
Adviser was built to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investing or tax advice. Adviser 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 information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
Tax Help was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that offer tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help build your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for firms that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme 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 whole lot more.
Visit this website to learn more this 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, you have found this guide on ways to improve your accounting or financial services website using WordPress helpful.
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