In Part 1 of this comprehensive article on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Basic Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Add New Functionality To Your WP Web Site With Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Improve Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn how to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation with WordPress plugins.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO)
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will show 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 link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors 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 (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some useful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own social networking community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to run a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add powerful social sharing features to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social features to your website with WordPress plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
In this section we will discuss how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides you with another way for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with content of high value and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Readers can report concerns, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact Form 7 lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily
- Displays location of events
(A map helps 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
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site Generation With WordPress Plugins
Accounting WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Tax
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
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 want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin provides several customizable ticker. 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 individual categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, scroll speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating repayments on auto loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate 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 invoices, create 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 others.
The plugin gives you the ability to 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 e-mail notification templates, access 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticketing system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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 WP Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting businesses. With the themes below you can own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized by installing premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
Accountancy comes with a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and fast loading. 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.
Go here for more information:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created for accountants. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to help give your accounting website a professional look. 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 section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
More information:
Divi
(Divi)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any type of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their web pages without editing code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ stunning themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This theme was developed specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six 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 full access to all sleek business themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
The Adviser WordPress Theme was specifically built to help finance professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing or tax advice. It 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.
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
Tax Help was designed specifically for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses offering tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally and help build your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
Finance Business Theme was specifically developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, 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 a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and lots more.
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, this guide has helped you learn ways to improve your business online with WordPress plugins and themes.
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