In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting business online, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Basic Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Using WordPress Plugins Extend Your Web Site’s Capabilities
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To WP Themes
Improving Website Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your articles and posts.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of pages
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Visitors To Your Site
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various WordPress plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run a social network on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin lets you run a community forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social sharing features and buttons to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social features to your site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
This section covers ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Add An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for improving user interaction
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared online with others
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value information and give users additional bonuses for free in exchange for their personal details. This could be an exclusive report, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective clients to contact you. Readers can raise problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide A Map
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps to your site helps 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 SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site to immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Payments
- Tax
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin installs a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
The plugin offers a number of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, scroll speed, background color, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, text color, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets your users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating car loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
This plugin 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)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with 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 your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
You can add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, view 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, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports international 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 WP Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoicing, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Accountants
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Below 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 For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
Visit this website to learn more about using this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
Accountancy Theme offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and loads fast. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This 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 types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for accountants. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is fully responsive (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.
Visit this website to learn more this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to give your accounting business site a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s mobile-friendly and includes pages for your accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more details about using this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WP Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional site 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 web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their web pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 professional themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically created to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also comes with 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 over 80 themes.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
The Adviser WordPress Theme was developed specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investments 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 multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This theme was designed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and firms that provide tax services. It’s designed to show your services professionally to help establish your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more details, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was designed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a whole lot 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, you have found this guide on how to improve your business online using WordPress helpful.
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