In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business presence online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Essential Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Website Generation With WordPress Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways of improving your accounting website using WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your articles and posts.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of WordPress plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin allows you to run a social networking community on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress helps you set up and run a community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Use this WordPress plugin to add social sharing features and buttons on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries
This section will show you how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for engaging with users
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared with new potential clients
A proven strategy for attracting new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide them with high value information and give them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also allows readers to send feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for users
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you add multiple contact forms on your website, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide A Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Clients can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With Plugins
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
The plugin provides several customizable features. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, scrolling speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, font family, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful financial tool for calculating car loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with 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 WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and several others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing system, CRM and many more 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 like 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 clients, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoicing)
It allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes For 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. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes listed below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme developed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme has a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The cost of purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here for more details:
Accounting
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
Kathryn is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework developed specifically for accounting services. It comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, many color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although it could easily suit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more details:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was created to exude 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 fully responsive and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a 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 adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create any type of professional site you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi WP Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as audio player, blog, circle counter, divider, filterable portfolio, map, portfolio, shop, social media follow, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ stunning themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This one from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to create good-looking corporate sites.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has six color schemes. It also comes with 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 themes.
Visit the theme website to learn more this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This theme was specifically developed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those providing tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way 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.
For more details about this theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
Finance Business was built for businesses that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business 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 settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
Go here for more information:
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 with WordPress plugins and themes helpful.
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