In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting & Financial Services Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- WP Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Web Site’s Capability
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To Themes
Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. This section explores ways of improving SEO, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation using plugins.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available many plugins that improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some more plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to set up a social networking community on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – Use this free plugin to set up and run a community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving engagement with users
- Provides other ways for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value content and give users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Readers can provide feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives 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
- Convenient for users
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select which topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Displays location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just 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
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Accounting Site Generation Using WordPress Plugins
Accounting – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes several customizable features. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customizations include colors, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include showing 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)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, view 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support 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 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 cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
You can customize Accounting Pro with premium add-ons.
For more details about using this theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This one comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and loads fast. It provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. The cost of purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site 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 responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This one is created specifically for accountants. The theme 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, various color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is 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 plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This one was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed 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 fully responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme built specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily edit the structure of their page without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include accordion, call to action, code, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, map, portfolio, slider, tabs, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically built to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six different different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ stunning themes.
For more information about this WordPress theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This one was specifically built to help finance professionals build trust through clean design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
To learn more about using this theme, visit this website:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was built for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more details about using this theme, visit this site:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
Finance Business Theme was built specifically for businesses that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
For more details 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 WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, better user engagement and traffic generation.
Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business …
***
"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
***