In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Web Economy
- Basic Web Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Tips For Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is an integral part of your online business growth. In this section, we discuss WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, better user engagement and generating more visitors to your accounting site.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Generate More Traffic
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are quite a number of plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
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
(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, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Use the BuddyPress plugin to set up and run your own social community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Set up a community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Easily add social sharing features on your website.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate More Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we will show you how to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides many benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for user engagement
- Provides additional opportunities for readers to share your content
A proven way to entice your visitors to subscribe is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a special report, checklists for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Readers can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides several benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenient for 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 allows you to add multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to segment your contact form so visitors can choose which department they want to contact. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Provide A Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google maps on your WordPress site:
- 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 Traffic Generation
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- CD
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can place a custom stock ticker on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with loads of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Appearance customizations include width, height, background color, opacity, scrolling speed, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows users to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for calculating repayments on car loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that sends 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticket management system, CRM and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, to do app, 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 and communicate with clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster 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, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting firms. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme built for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, 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 with premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and fast loading. It provides what you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in the cost of purchasing.
Go here for more information:
Accounting
(Accounting)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
Kathryn is a premium child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s created specifically for accounting services. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, many color options, 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 plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Visit this site to learn more about this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to help give your accounting website a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a free corporate theme developed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their web pages without touching any code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. It is responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium WordPress theme was built specifically to make corporate websites look good.
The Corporation has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It has six color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
To learn more about about this theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built to help those in the financial industry to build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. The Adviser theme 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 for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help grow your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This theme was specifically designed for organizations that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, accounting, loans, 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 a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a whole lot more.
For more information, 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
Hopefully, you have found this guide on ways to improve your accounting website with WordPress useful.
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