In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting business online, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Your 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. Areas covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Tools
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WordPress Plugins – Enhancing Your Blog’s Capability
- WordPress For Business – An Introduction To Themes
Improving Website Traffic With WordPress
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors To Your Website
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are many plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few powerful WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin can be used to set up a social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social sharing features and buttons to your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user engagement
- Provides you with an additional way for readers to share your content
An effective way to attract new subscribers to your email newsletter is to provide users with content of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their personal details. This can be an exclusive report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective clients to get in touch. Contact forms also allow readers to report problems, contact specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Is convenient for users
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add and manage multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Another feature you may want to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which department they want to contact. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Adding Maps
Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- Maps help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Display location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- 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 Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
Financial Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Rate of return
- Leases
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin provides loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, typeface, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating vehicle loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice integrates 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 WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, access 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple 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 and communicate with customers, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
It allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accountancy businesses. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Pro 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 (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to 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 fully responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with the price.
Go here for more info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for accountants. It has a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, flexible rotator, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was built with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is designed specifically to make your accounting business website look professional without looking dull. 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here for more information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
Go here for more details about this WordPress theme:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all stunning themes.
For more details about using this WordPress theme, visit this site:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
The Corporation WordPress Theme was designed specifically to make corporate websites look good.
The Corporation has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, six different color schemes, multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all sleek business themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This theme was developed to help those in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
Tax Help Theme was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally to help build your professional reputation. It provides 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 for more information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This one was built specifically for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
Go here for more details:
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 how to improve your accounting website using WordPress helpful.
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