In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Improve Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WordPress Plugins Enhance Your Site’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Newbies – An Introduction To Themes
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improving Your Business Online Using WordPress Themes And Plugins
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.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- URLs – configure 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 to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some more useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run your own social network on your site.
- bbPress – This free plugin lets you run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Monarch – This WordPress plugin lets you add social sharing features on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s take a look now at how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engagement with your users
- Provides another way for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a useful report, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. Readers can raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for users
A popular WordPress contact form plugin 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 insert multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so users can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your website also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
This plugin includes several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include height, width, scrolling speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, view reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international 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 and communicate with clients, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial Themes For WordPress
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. 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 web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme built for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
You can easily expand this theme using premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included with your purchase.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
Kathryn is a child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s built for accounting services. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, flexible rotator, many color options, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was specifically designed to give your accounting site a professional look. 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information about using this theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
This 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. It includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about about using this theme, visit this website:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create any style of professional website you want using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without touching any code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as bar counter, blurb, circle counter, divider, gallery, map, person, pricing table, testimonial, video slider, fullwidth image, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all stunning themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically created to make corporate websites look good.
The Corporation has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 unique unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ stunning themes.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
The Adviser Theme was developed to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust through clean design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help establish 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 info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This premium theme was specifically built for firms that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
More information:
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 ways of improving your accounting business online with WordPress themes and plugins.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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