In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Tips For Accountants – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins And Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn ways of improving search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors with WordPress plugins & themes.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your content posts.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will show in search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use 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 search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to set up a social community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress can be used to run a community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Easily add social sharing features on your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries
Let’s discuss now ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides many benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide users with valuable information and give them additional items of value for free in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets visitors report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Customers can better plan their visits and appointments
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Your SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
WordPress Plugins For Accounting
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- CD
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin gives you a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides loads of 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 customization features include size, symbols, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating vehicle loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include displaying payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating 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 integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoice versions, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WordPress user management database to keep track of 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, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, displaying 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 Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoice)
It allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting 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, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
Go here for more details:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
Accountancy Theme comes with a variety of 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, SEO friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Go here for more details:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
Kathryn is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s developed for accountants. It comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive. 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 must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
Accounting WordPress 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 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 fully responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create any style of professional website you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their page without editing a single line of code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more details:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This theme from Elegant Themes was developed specifically to make corporate websites look good.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Visit the theme website to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a 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)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was built for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms providing tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help grow your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium theme was specifically developed for businesses that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, 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, this guide has helped you learn ways to improve your accounting or financial services website with WordPress.
Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business …
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***