In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Improve Your Web Pages
- How To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic Using Plugins
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For SEO
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better indexing of pages
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Business Generation Using WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some useful plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to set up and run a social networking community on your site, with member profiles, messaging, activity streams, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Set up your own online discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without third-party subscriptions.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your posts and pages.
(You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
Let’s discuss now ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides another way for your content to be shared online with others
A proven way to entice your visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their details. This can be an exclusive report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. A contact form also allows readers to provide feedback, contact specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- More convenient for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
Contact Form 7 is easy to install and set up and lets you create multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin also 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 visitors can select which department they want to contact. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Map
Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find you easily and plan their appointments better
- Show location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Below are just some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
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.
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Tax
- Credit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin comes with loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include size, symbols, colours, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for car loans, real estate loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing payment protection, calculating 12 to 60 months loans and creating a form 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 out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand 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 WP’s user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, displaying 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 WordPress Plugin)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, CRM and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports different 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 WP Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage clients and invoicing, 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 WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accountancy businesses. 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 – WordPress Theme)
Accounting Pro is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers 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 expanded using premium add-ons.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy)
Accountancy Theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and fully responsive. Accountancy provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This one 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 types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This one is developed for accounting businesses. Kathryn offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it could easily suit 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 info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is designed specifically to give your accounting business website a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
More info:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include accordion, blurb, code, divider, gallery, map, post title, sidebar, tabs, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically to create good-looking corporate websites.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 different color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all themes.
Visit this website to learn more about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investing or tax advice. 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 the drag-and-drop visual composer..
For more details about this WordPress theme, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This theme was built specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally to help build your business reputation. It comes with 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 to learn more this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and a whole lot more.
Go here for more information:
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, this guide has helped you learn ways of improving search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation using WordPress plugins & themes.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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