In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- Essential Website Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Content
In this section, we continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Web Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using WordPress Plugins And Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improving Your Business Online Using WordPress Plugins and Themes
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are so many ways WordPress can help to optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your articles and posts.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions 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 has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts and pages on your site
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your site.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you run your own social network on your website.
- bbPress – Set up your own online discussion forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – Use this plugin to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide 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 new prospective clients
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. A contact form also lets readers report issues, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives 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
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free contact form plugin allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms, 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 else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Adding A Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps (e.g. Google Maps), into your site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Show location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site
Accounting – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website to immediately add a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
The plugin offers several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself to match your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customization features include colors, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for vehicle loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to a specified email address.
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)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of your invoices, create quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing 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 For WordPress)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and ticket management system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin For WordPress – Invoicing)
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 WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized by installing premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
This theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and fast loading. It provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
Kathryn is designed specifically for accounting services. It allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color choices, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme 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.
For more details, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to help make your accounting business site look professional without looking dull. 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more information about this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website 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 you to understand and redesign the structure of their web pages without editing code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include accordion, call to action, circle counter, countdown timer, gallery, map, portfolio, shop, social media follow, text, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ stunning themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
The Corporation was designed specifically to make corporate sites look great.
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 that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust online through clean design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was developed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that provide tax services. It’s designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help build your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
Finance Business was designed specifically for organizations that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, 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 guide on how to improve your website with WordPress plugins and themes helpful.
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