In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your accounting business online, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Web Economy
- Basic Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improve Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Improving Website Traffic Using WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your website’s SEO:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your posts.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- 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 SEO, Better User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available many plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more useful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run your own social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress helps you run a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without requiring third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – This WordPress plugin lets you add social sharing features and buttons on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social features to your site with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides another way for your content to be shared around with others
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide high value information and give users a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch with you. A contact form also lets readers send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
Contact forms provide 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 page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to create and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select which topic they are contacting your company about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding a map to your website 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
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins - Accounting Businesses
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Tax
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, post or page using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes several customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, 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 plugin lets your site visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for auto loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculators)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
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 WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, accessing 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 Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful 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 WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customers and invoices, 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)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
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. Below is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting firms. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has 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 customize Accounting Pro using premium add-ons.
Go here for more information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created for accounting businesses. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, many color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about using this theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to help give your accounting 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 responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean-looking and loads fast.
To learn more about about this theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create any type of professional site you want using its page builder or 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 edit the structure of their page without editing a single line of code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes audio player, blurb, code, divider, image, map, person, sidebar, testimonial, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation was designed specifically to create good-looking corporate sites.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 sleek business themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium theme was built specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust 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..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This theme was developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms that provide tax assistance. It’s designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help grow your professional 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 info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium theme was developed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
For more information, go here:
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 guide has helped you learn how to improve your business online using WordPress.
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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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