In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your accounting business online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Website Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Creating Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
- WP Plugins Enhance Your Blog’s Features And Functionality
- WP For Beginners – An Overview Of WordPress Themes
Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic With WordPress Plugins
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized web addresses for your article pages.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Traffic Generation
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up a social community on WordPress.
- bbPress – This plugin allows you to set up and manage a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
Generating More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Add A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. Adding a newsletter provides a number of benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared with others
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with high value content and give them something for free in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Readers can provide feedback, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- 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
- Looks professional
- More convenient for users
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free plugin allows you to add and manage multiple contact forms to your website, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Adding Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are very useful tools for several reasons:
- They increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(Maps help 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 & Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- CD
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
This plugin comes with several customizable ticker. You can choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, speed, symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin)
This free plugin allows your site visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for vehicle loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress users with clients to bill.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoice versions, create 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, and several others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create e-mail notification templates, view 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 WP Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoicing)
The plugin supports international 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 clients, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online 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 suited for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. With these themes you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This is a turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized by installing premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This premium WordPress theme comes with a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to 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, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Visit this website to learn more about using this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme was developed for accounting services. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, various colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
Accounting WordPress Theme was created to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed 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 responsive and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details about this theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s 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 for more information:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. You can create a professional site using its page builder or beautiful and unique 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 pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include audio player, blog, circle counter, email optin, gallery, map, post title, slider, testimonial, video, fullwidth image, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one from Elegant Themes was specifically built to create great-looking corporate sites.
This theme has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, six unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 professional themes.
Visit the theme website for more information about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically built to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The Adviser theme 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.
Visit this site to learn more this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was built for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and businesses that provide tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way and help grow your business reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more details, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed for firms that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business 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 features, animations, and lots more.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
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 comprehensive guide on WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, increasing user engagement and driving more web traffic useful.
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