In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Services
- Basic Website Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WordPress Plugins – Extending Your Site’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Newbies – An Overview Of Themes
Ways Of Improving Website Traffic
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section discusses ways of improving SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your accounting or financial services site with plugins.
Optimize Your Website For SEO With WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create SEO-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 improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that will improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are a few more plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Set up an online social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress plugin to run an online community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This WordPress plugin lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features to your website.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we’ll show you how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared around with new prospective customers
An effective strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a special report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. A contact form also lets visitors report issues, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are just 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
WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Improve Your SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Website
WordPress Plugins - Accounting And Financial Services
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for auto loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
It will show 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 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 e-mail notification 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticketing system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoicing, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Invoicing)
It integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial 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 the themes listed below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded by installing premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and loads fast. 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 WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Accounting
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
Visit the theme website to learn more this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created for accountants. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers 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, inexpensive, search engine friendly, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit any profession you like, 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.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to help make your accounting website look professional 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built 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. It’s clean-looking and fast-loading.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create any style of professional site you want using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 professional themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium theme was specifically created to create good-looking corporate websites.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all stunning themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This premium theme was specifically developed to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investments or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more details about this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This one was built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those that provide tax assistance. This theme is designed to show your services professionally to help build your business reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more details:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed for organizations that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, 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, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
Go here to learn more this theme:
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 SEO, improve user engagement and increase traffic generation with plugins and themes.
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