In Part 1 of this step-by-step article on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For Accountants
- Essential Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Web Site’s Functionality
- WP For Business – An Overview Of WP Themes
Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better indexing of your content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available also a number of plugins that improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you run your own social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up and run a community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides several benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides an additional way for subscribers to share your content
An effective way to attract subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide high value content and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a special report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also allows visitors to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact Form 7 allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective customers can select the topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your website also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins For Financial Services
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
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 them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Tax
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – 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 page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin offers several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing speed, text, colours, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for vehicle loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a 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 WP Plugin)
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. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, accessing 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, client relationship management and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports international 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 Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting – WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best themes themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, 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 with premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. It provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with the price.
Visit the theme website to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This one is built specifically for accounting services. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully 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 information about using this theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to give your accounting website a professional look. 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 accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a free corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the 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 a clean and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional website you want using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 stunning themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This theme was developed specifically to make corporate websites look good.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which 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 sleek business themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was specifically designed to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investment advice or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. It’s designed to showcase your services professionally to help build your professional reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more details about this WordPress theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium theme was developed for businesses that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, and lots more.
Visit the theme website to learn more about using 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, this article has helped you learn ways of improving your accounting website using WordPress plugins and themes.
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