In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Your Accounting Website – Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using Plugins And Themes
Web traffic is a vital part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For SEO Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your content posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to set up a social network on your site, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – Run a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
This section looks at how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides other ways for readers to share your content
One of the best ways to get 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 time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. A contact form also allows readers to raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- More convenient for visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free contact form plugin lets you create and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select the department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Map Integration
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Payments
- CD
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes loads of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, text color, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for auto loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, viewing 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with ticketing management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports different 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, track 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)
iBilling integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With these themes you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily customize Accounting Pro using premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This inexpensive theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. It provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is created for accounting services. It allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various colors, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. 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 must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to help give your accounting website 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about using this theme, visit the theme site:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for employee 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 For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes bar counter, call to action, code, email optin, image, number counter, post title, slider, social media follow, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was designed specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
The Corporation has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with 6 unique 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 access to all beautifully-designed themes.
For more information, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed to help finance professionals build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investments or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more information, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built specifically for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms offering tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help establish your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
Finance Business Theme was specifically developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
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 accounting business online using WordPress helpful.
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