In Part 1 of this comprehensive article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Accounting Professionals Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Professionals
- Improving Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Improve Your Web Site’s Capability
- WP For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Tips For Improving Website Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search 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 – 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 Visitors To Your Site
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins for WordPress that improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few useful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin can be used to set up your own social community on your website, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Run an online community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Add social sharing features on your website.
(You can add social features to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s discuss now how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared online with other potential clients
An effective way to attract new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide users with valuable information and offer them something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a special report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also lets users report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Maps
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Interest rate
- Payments
- CD
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes loads of customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, scroll speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, font size, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator lets users calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for calculating auto loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to a specified email address.
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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
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 business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, create 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, displaying 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 Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting businesses. With these themes you can have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
You can easily customize this theme through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This one offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and loads fast. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme was built for accounting businesses. The theme offers multiple layouts, slider, 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 engine optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built to enhance 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 while not looking dull. 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 section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more details:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a unique, professional site using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and change the structure of their pages without touching any code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 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. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 professional themes.
Visit this site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
The Corporation WordPress Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically built to make corporate websites look good.
It has a page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, six different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
Adviser was designed specifically to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like 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 a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit the theme website to learn more about using this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This theme was developed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and businesses offering tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services in a professional way to help build your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
Finance Business Theme was specifically designed for businesses that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
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
Hopefully, this article has helped you learn ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic using WordPress plugins and themes.
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