In Part 1 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:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Tips For Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins that can help to improve SEO, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will show in their search result pages.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some powerful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use BuddyPress to set up and manage an online social network on your WordPress website, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to run your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we discuss ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides you with other ways for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for getting visitors to subscribe is to provide users with high value information and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This can be a guide, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. Visitors can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select the department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some of the more 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
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With Plugins And Themes
Accounting – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website to immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Leases
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize it yourself to match your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, text color, font size, 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 tool for auto loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends 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.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, access 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticket management system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
It allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accounting themes available. With these themes you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with 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 customize Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and fast loading. Accountancy provides the features you need without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for accountants. It allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and offers multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme could easily suit 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.
To learn more about using this theme, visit the theme site:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This premium theme was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements designed specifically to give your accounting site a professional look. 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more information about this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create any style of professional website you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include accordion, call to action, contact form, email optin, image, login, person, shop, tabs, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ professional themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically created to make corporate sites look good.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, 6 different 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 full access to all professional themes.
Go here for more information about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was built to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as 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 a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that offer tax services. It’s designed to show your services professionally to help grow your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
Finance Business was developed for businesses that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
More info:
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 your accounting business online using WordPress.
Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business …
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***