In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting & Financial Professionals Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Improve Your Web Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- Tips For Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins that can help improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your accounting or financial services site.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Website
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This plugin helps you run a social community on your website, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Run your own online forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring a third party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Monarch – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
This section will show you how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to retain and grow your readership. It] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared around with new potential customers
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide them with high value content and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Visitors can report issues, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms to your website, customize your form 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 segment your contact form so users can select which topic they are contacting your company about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- They increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are just some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful tool for calculating vehicle loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of your invoices, provide quotes, create 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, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and many others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, display reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticket system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as 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 customer data and invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can customize this theme using premium add-ons.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
Accountancy comes in a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, fast loading, and is responsive. Accountancy Theme provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for accounting services. The theme comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, 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 WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to help give your accounting business site 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 and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here to learn more this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes bar counter, blog, code, countdown timer, gallery, login, portfolio, shop, testimonial, video, fullwidth image, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation was designed specifically to make corporate sites look good.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has 6 unique color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This theme was built specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investments or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Visit the theme site to learn more about this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those providing tax assistance. The theme is designed to showcase your services professionally 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 many custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
Finance Business was designed specifically for firms that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
For more details about using this theme, visit this site:
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
We hope that you have found this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your accounting or financial services business online using WordPress useful.
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