In Part One of this article on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting And Financial Professionals Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Website Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Ways Of Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section discusses ways to improve your accounting or financial services business online with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that search engines will show in their search result pages.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available dozens of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- 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 things you can do to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to set up a social community on your website.
- bbPress – This plugin can be used to run your own forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – This plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we show you how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving user engagement
- Provides additional opportunities for readers to share your content
An effective way to attract new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide them with valuable content and give them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a handy guide, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to report concerns, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that is easy to install and set up and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your WordPress site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Accounting Site Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
Accounting – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed 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 for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
The plugin includes several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include colours, size, symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends 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 a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, accessing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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, helpdesk with support ticket management system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress 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. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress 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, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize Accounting Pro with premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This inexpensive theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. Accountancy provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with the cost of purchasing.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built for accounting services. The theme provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements designed specifically to help give your accounting website 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, and a blog.
Go here for more information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and fast-loading.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a professional site using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and edit the structure of their web pages without touching any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 stunning themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six unique color schemes, 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 all themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
Adviser was built specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business 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 lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This theme was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way to help establish your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This one was designed for businesses that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
Go here for 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
We hope that you have found this guide on ways of improving your business online with WordPress plugins and themes useful.
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