In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Web Economy
- Basic Pages
- Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic Using WordPress
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
- Add New Functionality To Your Web Site With WordPress Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Overview Of Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section explores how to improve your accounting or financial services business online with WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your site.
Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do 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. Here are some powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up and manage your own online social network on your site.
- bbPress – Use the bbPress WordPress plugin to set up and manage your own forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Easily add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
Let’s now discuss how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engagement with your users
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared online with new prospective customers
A proven way to get visitors to subscribe is to provide high value content and give users a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Contact forms also let users provide feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for site visitors
A very popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WP Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you insert multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another option you may want to consider is to segment your contact form so users can select which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Add Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your website also provides a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily
- Displays location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site to immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- CD
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show 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 place a custom stock ticker on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with a number of customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing size, text, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets your users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for vehicle loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with 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 WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, viewing 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like document management, notice board, 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 client data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Invoicing)
iBilling allows you to get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With these themes 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 – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme 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 lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded through premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This premium theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and loads fast. It provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and 1 year of support.
For more details about this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework designed specifically for accounting services. It comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, 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 WordPress responsive slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more details:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to help 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
Go here for more information:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create any kind of professional site you want using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their page without editing a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include audio player, blurb, circle counter, email optin, filterable portfolio, map, portfolio, shop, social media follow, text, fullwidth image, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This theme was specifically created to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a 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 full access to all themes.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built to help finance professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing advice or tax advice. Adviser 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..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme was specifically designed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those that provide tax services. This theme is designed to show your services professionally to help build your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This theme was specifically built for firms that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
For more details, go here:
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 business online with WordPress plugins and themes helpful.
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