In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Website Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section discusses ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors with WordPress plugins & themes.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available many plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Use this free plugin to set up and manage a social network on your WordPress site, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up and manage a community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring 3rd-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s now take a look at how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared online with others
A proven way to attract new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide high value information and offer users additional items of value for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Users can report problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and lets you add and manage multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can select the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add Maps
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show 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
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Tax
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin installs a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes a number of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include height, width, scrolling speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, text color, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating automotive loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculators)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a 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 For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin lets you integrate 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, single-page 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
You can add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, access 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, help desk with ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, 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 clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoice)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster online by integrating 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. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. With the themes below you can have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded using premium add-ons.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
Accountancy has a variety of built-in styles and layouts to make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and loads fast. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and one year of support.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for accounting businesses. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is fully responsive. Although this theme can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
For more information, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements designed specifically to give your accounting business website a professional look while not 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information about using this theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create a professional site using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more details:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was created specifically to make corporate sites look great.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. 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 full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser)
Adviser was built to help those in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically designed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and businesses offering tax services. The theme is designed to show your services professionally and help build 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, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
Finance Business Theme was built specifically for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, accounting, loans, and more. This theme 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, animated elements, and a lot more.
Visit this website to learn more this 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 ways to improve your business online with WordPress helpful.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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