In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- How To Improve Your Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins – The Easy Way To Extend Your Site’s Features And Functionality
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To Themes
Improve Website Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section explores how to improve your accounting website with WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
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, commenting, and social features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to run a social community on your website.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up a discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – This plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your posts and pages.
(You can add social features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared with others
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a special report, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. A contact form also lets readers provide feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This plugin lets you create multiple contact forms on your site, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective customers can select which department they want to contact. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your site also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- A map improves local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their visits or appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins And Themes
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Tax
- Equity
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – 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 with shortcodes.
This plugin comes with several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, scroll speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, text color, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for car loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator 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 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 business users with clients to bill.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out 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 locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create 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 several others.
WP-Invoice 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 email templates, accessing 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, 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 and communicate with clients, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes For Financial Services
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme for WordPress is a 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 (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can expand this theme by installing premium add-ons.
Go here for more details about using this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included in your purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Visit this site to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is a child theme for the Genesis Framework developed specifically for accounting businesses. Kathryn provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Visit the theme website to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to give your accounting business website a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Divi
(Divi)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a unique, professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and redesign the structure of their page without editing a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
Go here for more details:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This theme from Elegant Themes was created specifically to make corporate sites look good.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with 6 unique color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ stunning themes.
Go here for more info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This theme was developed specifically to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Visit the theme website for more information about using this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
Tax Help was specifically built for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services in a professional way and help build your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This theme was built for firms that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. This theme 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, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, 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
We hope that you have found this article on ways to improve your accounting or financial services website with WordPress themes and plugins helpful.
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