In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your accounting business online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Business Generation With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Improving Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section, we explore ways of improving your accounting website using WordPress themes and plugins.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your content
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Business Generation Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available many plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you set up your own social network on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to set up a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s discuss now how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for increasing user interaction
- Provides other ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide them with information of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Users can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms on your website, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so users can choose which department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Add Maps
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your website also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Leases
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with a number of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customization features include colors, speed, symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for auto loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include showing 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 For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, displaying 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticket management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoice)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster online 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, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. With these themes you can have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme 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.
Accounting Pro can be customized with premium add-ons.
For more details about using this theme, visit the theme site:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy Theme provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with the cost of purchase.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
For more details about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework created specifically for accountants. The theme comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search engine friendly, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit 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.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to make your accounting site look professional while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s mobile-friendly and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
Go here for more info:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create any type of professional site you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily edit the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This one was specifically built to make corporate sites look good.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium theme was specifically built to help finance industry professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investments or tax help. 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 information about using this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium theme was built specifically for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way and help establish your business reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This one was developed specifically for organizations that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, 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, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
For more information about this WordPress theme, go here:
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 comprehensive guide on how to improve your accounting website using WordPress useful.
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