In Part 1 of this guide 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 Accountants In The Online Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- How To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Improve Your Blog’s Functionality
- WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Tips For Accountants – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section explores ways to improve your accounting or financial services business online using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better page indexing
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Site Generation Using Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available a number of plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Run a social networking community on your site.
- bbPress – Set up your own community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s take a look now at how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with another way for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with high value information and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a useful report, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Users can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert multiple contact forms on your website, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can select the topic they are contacting you about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide A Map
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just 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
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Tax
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
The plugin comes with a number of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing size, symbols, colours, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for automotive loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, access 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different 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 WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and fully 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 with the cost of purchase.
Go here for more information:
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 admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed for accounting services. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to give your accounting site a professional look 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and fast-loading.
Go here for more details:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a unique, professional site using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their pages without editing code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include audio player, blog, circle counter, divider, filterable portfolio, map, portfolio, pricing table, testimonial, video slider, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ stunning themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed specifically to make corporate websites look great.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with six unique color schemes. It also comes with 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 professional themes.
For more information, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
Adviser was designed to help finance professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investments or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that provide tax services. The theme is designed to show your services professionally to help grow your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This theme was designed for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business 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 the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, 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 comprehensive guide has helped you learn how to improve SEO, increase user engagement and generate more visitors with WordPress plugins and themes.
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