In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting Services Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Web Economy
- Improving Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins Enhance Your Web Site’s Functionality
- WordPress For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes
Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that search engines will show in their search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available dozens of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- 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 things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some more useful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run your own social network on your WordPress website, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress allows you to set up your own community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Add powerful social sharing features on your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s now discuss how to improve sales and generate 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 including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user interaction
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared with new potential clients
An effective strategy for enticing your visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value information and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch with you. Readers can report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms to your posts and pages, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective customers can select which department they want to contact. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
Financial WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Tax
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker offers loads of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free plugin allows users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with 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 the WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, displaying 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, client relationship management and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin 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 WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, 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 WP Plugin – Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial 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. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accountancy firms. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
Accounting Pro is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has 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 a whole lot more.
You can easily customize this theme by installing premium add-ons.
Go here for more information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme comes with 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 is responsive. Accountancy provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
Go here for more information:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website 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, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
For more details, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This one is designed specifically for accounting businesses. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is responsive. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress responsive slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is designed specifically to give your accounting site a professional look without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and loads fast.
Go here for more details about this theme:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a unique, professional site using its 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 anyone to understand and easily edit the structure of their web pages without editing code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
It 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 responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built specifically to make corporate sites look great.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with 6 unique color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
Adviser was specifically designed to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically built for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. It’s designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help build your professional reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This theme was designed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
To learn more about using this 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, this comprehensive guide has helped you learn ways of improving SEO, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your website with WordPress plugins & themes.
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