In Part One of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Web Economy
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Improving Traffic
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your WordPress Web Site With Plugins
- WordPress For Business – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Your Business Online Using WordPress Themes And Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section discusses WordPress plugins for improving SEO, better user engagement and web traffic generation.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to set up your own social networking community on your website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this plugin to add social sharing features and buttons on your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s discuss now how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Add A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides an additional way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for enticing visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value information and give users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a useful report, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Contact forms also let visitors report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin 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 create multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is adding sections to your contact form so users can select the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed 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 quite a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that displays up to 20 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 For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
The plugin includes several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, speed, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for vehicle loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator 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 forms 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.
WP-Invoice 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 from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, view reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket system, client relationship management and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
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 Plugin For WordPress)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage clients and invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. With these themes you can own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily expand this theme using premium add-ons.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This premium theme for WordPress comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and loads fast. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting Theme 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 types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed specifically for accounting businesses. It has multiple layouts, slider, 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, search optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to give your accounting business site a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your accounting 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 specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more details about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a professional website using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include accordion, call to action, circle counter, divider, gallery, map, person, slider, social media follow, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium theme for WordPress was created specifically to make corporate sites look good.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with six color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 themes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This one was designed specifically to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit this website to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses providing tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services in a professional way and help grow your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more details:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built for firms that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and lots more.
For more details about this theme, visit this site:
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 to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your accounting website with WordPress plugins and themes.
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