In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins And Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WordPress Plugins – Enhance Your Site’s Capabilities
- WordPress For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins
Your web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. In this section, we explore WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and driving more web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that will show to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your web pages
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
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 (lists all of your posts and pages for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up and manage a social network on your site, with member profiles, user groups, activity streams, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Run your own online discussion forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your site.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. It provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving engaging with users
- Provides you with another way for subscribers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide high value information and give users additional bonuses for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be a useful report, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Users can report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and configure and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option to consider is to add sections to your contact form so visitors can choose the topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Map Integration
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office more easily and plan their trips better
- Display location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some of the more 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 SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Accounting Website
WordPress Plugins For Accounting And Financial Services
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Tax
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
The plugin includes several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, accessing 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 For WordPress)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, 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 allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress 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 (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily expand this theme using premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This theme offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more details:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Go here for more information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
Kathryn is built specifically for accounting businesses. The theme comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, a variety of color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This one was built to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to help make your accounting business 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their web pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has bar counter, blurb, circle counter, countdown timer, gallery, login, post title, shop, testimonial, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one was built specifically to make corporate websites look great.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with 6 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 access to over 80 professional themes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme was designed specifically to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
Tax Help Theme was built specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms offering tax services. It’s designed to show your services professionally to help grow your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
Finance Business was specifically designed for businesses that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, finance, corporate, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, and lots more.
More info:
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
We hope that you have found this article on ways to improve your accounting or financial services website using WordPress useful.
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