In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Services
- Your Website Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Ways To Improve Traffic
- How To Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, we discuss how to improve your website using WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will display in search results.
- Images – title your images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – WordPress can be set up to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run a social network on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – bbPress lets you run your own forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
This section will show you how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for subscribers to share your content
An effective strategy for enticing your visitors to subscribe is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Readers can send feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective customers can choose the topic they are contacting your company about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a very useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Clients can better plan their meeting and appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin includes a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments online. This is a useful tool for calculating vehicle loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to a specified email address.
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-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and many others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, displaying reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 ticketing management system, client relationship management and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, 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 Plugin – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accountancy firms. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize this theme using premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme offers a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy Theme provides the features you need without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was created for accounting businesses. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, various color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
Accounting WordPress Theme was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and layout elements specifically designed to help make your accounting 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 services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create a professional site using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their page without touching any code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
For more information, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium theme was specifically built to make corporate sites look great.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 different different color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 sleek business themes.
Go here for more info:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed to help finance professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investments or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those providing tax services. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally to help establish your business reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed for firms that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a whole lot 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 guide on how to improve your accounting or financial services website using WordPress plugins and themes useful.
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