In Part One of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Improve Your Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WordPress Plugins – Extend Your Website’s Features And Functionality
- WordPress For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Ways Of Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your posts to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
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
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Set up an online social community on WordPress.
- bbPress – bbPress allows you to set up a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Social Media Feather – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding newsletters] provides several benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides another way for subscribers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide users with high value information and give them something valuable for free in exchange for their details. This could be an exclusive guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also lets users provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Is convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create multiple contact forms on your posts and pages, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select which department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your website also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their meeting and appointments
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site to immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin installs a widget that displays 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)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing speed, text, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating auto loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a 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 is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, viewing 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, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, 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 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 – Invoice)
It lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes For Accountants
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can customize Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
Visit the theme site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium theme for WordPress has a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme was designed for accountants. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, many color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
For more information, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements designed specifically to make your accounting website look professional without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
This is a corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and fast-loading.
More info:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
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 a single line of code.
(Divi WP Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as audio player, call to action, circle counter, divider, gallery, number counter, person, slider, testimonial, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
The Corporation Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically created to create good-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was built to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust through clean web design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investment advice or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that offer tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services professionally to help grow your professional reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This theme was designed for firms that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, 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, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a lot 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, you have found this article on how to improve your website using WordPress useful.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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