In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Using WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Enhance Your Web Site’s Features
- WP For Business – An Introduction To Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your articles and posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast 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 website’s SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few useful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run your own social community on your site, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress can be used to set up and run a forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons on your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- 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 additional opportunities for readers to share your content
A proven way to get visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and give users a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Contact forms also allow readers to report problems, contact specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits, like:
- Reducing 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 page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- More convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you add multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select which topic they are contacting you about. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Show location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Here are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
WordPress Plugins For Accountants
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Tax
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, font family, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator lets your users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on car loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends 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 Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
WP-Invoice 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 notification email templates, viewing 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 WP Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a look at some of the best accounting themes available. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accountancy 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 a whole lot more.
You can easily expand this theme by installing premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
Accountancy comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and loads fast. It provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. The cost of purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
Go here for more details about this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was created for accountants. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, 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 slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to make your accounting business site look professional without looking dull. 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, 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. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and fast-loading.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their page without touching any code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include bar counter, blurb, contact form, countdown timer, image, login, post title, slider, testimonial, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
The Corporation WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to create good-looking corporate websites.
It has a 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 that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 professional themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This theme was specifically designed to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. The theme 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 details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This theme was developed specifically for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those offering tax services. The theme is designed to show your services professionally and help establish your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
Finance Business was specifically built for organizations that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, 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, a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
Visit the theme website to learn more about this WordPress theme:
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 guide on how to improve your accounting or financial services website using WordPress helpful.
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