In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting & Financial Professionals Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Professionals
- Essential Web Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Site
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To Themes
Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
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 sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for indexing by search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your accounting or financial services website’s 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 plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own online social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and more.
- bbPress – Use this free WordPress plugin to set up and manage an online discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
In this section we’ll show you how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared with new potential customers
A proven strategy for enticing your visitors to become subscribers is to provide users with valuable content and give them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to contact you. Visitors can report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and configure and lets you create multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They increase local SEO
- Allows clients to better plan their meeting or appointments
- Display location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator lets your users calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for automotive loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of your invoices, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, displaying reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin 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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With these themes you can own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme created 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-resized images, and lots more.
You can easily customize this theme with premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This inexpensive theme has a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and fast loading. Accountancy provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and one year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
To learn more about about this theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically for accounting businesses. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many 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 slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
For more details, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to help give your accounting business 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 accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme built specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can 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. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional site using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their web pages without touching any code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It 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. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ stunning themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
The Corporation Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically developed to make corporate sites look good.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically developed to help finance professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help build your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more information about this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This one was developed for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a lot more.
Go here for more details:
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 article on ways to improve your website with WordPress helpful.
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"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)
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