In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting business web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Professionals
- Improve Your Website Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Website Generation Using Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Your Accounting Website – Improving Your Business Online With WordPress Plugins and Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, you will learn ways to improve SEO, improve user engagement and generate more visitors using WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for indexing by search engines)
- 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 business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some powerful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to set up a social networking community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – bbPress allows you to set up and run a discussion forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with an additional way for readers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for readers to contact you. Contact forms also let visitors raise concerns, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Is convenient for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another option to consider is to segment your contact form so users can choose which topic they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your WordPress site also provides visitors with many benefits, such as:
- Maps improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Display location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Website Generation With Plugins
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Payments
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
The plugin includes loads of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, text color, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator allows users to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for calculating automotive loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates 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, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, 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 several others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, display 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, client relationship management and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional 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 Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customers and invoicing, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
iBilling lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes For Accounting
To benefit the most from using WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes listed below you can have 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 theme for WordPress is an inexpensive turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
You can customize Accounting Pro using premium add-ons.
Go here for more details:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in the cost of purchasing.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This one 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 mobile-friendly. Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
To learn more about this theme, visit this site:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This one is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework created for accounting services. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although it could easily suit any profession, 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.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional website you want 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 anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their page without touching any code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include audio player, call to action, circle counter, email optin, gallery, number counter, person, sidebar, social media follow, video, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This theme was specifically developed to create good-looking corporate websites.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 stunning themes.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investing advice or tax advice. 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 WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help establish your business reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
Finance Business was developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. It 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 features, animated elements, and a lot more.
To learn more about using this theme, visit this website:
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, you have found this article on ways to improve your accounting business online using WordPress useful.
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