In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy
- Basic Pages
- Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we will continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Improving Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Your Business Online With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section, you will learn WordPress plugins & themes for improving search engine optimization, better user engagement and web traffic generation.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for better page indexing
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress plugins you can add to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are a few fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run your own social community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – Run an online community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s now discuss ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Provide A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. It] provides a number of benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for user engagement
- Provides another way for your content to be shared online with others
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for users
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to add multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Contact Form 7 also supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective customers can select the topic they are contacting you about. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Map Integration
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your website also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers 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 For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website to immediately add a range of functional tools for users. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Loans
- CD
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
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 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 post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes several customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include height, width, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for calculating vehicle loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a message to a specified email address.
It will display 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send 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 locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of your invoices, provide quotes, create single-page 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, 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, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, accessing 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, helpdesk with ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools like document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customers and invoices, tracks 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 payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting 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)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
To learn more about about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This one offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. It provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase price includes free updates and one year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
Kathryn is built for accountants. It offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various color options, is easy to use, SEO friendly, 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 plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to make your accounting website look professional while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive and includes pages for your accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a free corporate theme developed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a unique, professional site using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and edit the structure of their page without editing any code.
(Divi – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include accordion, blurb, contact form, divider, image, login, person, slider, social media follow, text, fullwidth code, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all stunning themes.
Go here for more information about using this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation Theme was designed specifically to create great-looking corporate sites.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six unique unique 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 full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
Adviser was built specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those that provide tax assistance. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way to help build your professional reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme website:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
Finance Business was designed for organizations that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. This theme 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 the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a lot more.
Visit the theme site to learn more this WordPress theme:
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 article has helped you learn WordPress plugins & themes for improving SEO, increasing user engagement and driving more visitors.
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