In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business online, we covered the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Your Website Pages
- Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Improve Traffic With WordPress
- Generating Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- WordPress Plugins – Enhance Your Web Site’s Capabilities
- WP For Business – An Introduction To Themes
Improve Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your posts.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Post Categories – Add categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will appear in search results.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available dozens of plugins that improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your site’s SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few more useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin allows you to set up a social community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – Use this free plugin to set up and manage your own online forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Use E-Newsletter to send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your pages and posts.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your accounting business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that can save businesses time and money
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared with others
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide users with information of high value and offer them additional items of value for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch with you. Readers can send feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for users
A popular contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you create multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so users can select which topic they are contacting you about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your WordPress site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily
- Displays location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins 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 Visitors
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately add a range of functional tools for your site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Tax
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with several customizable ticker. You can choose to use 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 height, width, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments. This is a great financial tool for calculating automotive loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoices, create 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, and several others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, access 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application 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 Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoicing, 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 – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting Themes For WordPress
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily customize this theme with premium add-ons.
Go here for more information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This inexpensive theme offers a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and is responsive. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with the cost of purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This one is designed specifically for accountants. The theme offers a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, many color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, SEO friendly, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme can easily fit 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.
Go here for more information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This one was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to help make your accounting business 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 services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
More information:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme developed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can 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. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create any kind of professional site you want using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily edit the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has accordion, call to action, contact form, email optin, image, number counter, person, slider, tabs, video, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
The Corporation was created specifically to make corporate websites look great.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with six color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
Visit the theme website to learn more this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically developed to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investing advice or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
Tax Help was built specifically for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms offering tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically developed for organizations that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots more.
More info:
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 how to improve your accounting business online with WordPress themes and plugins.
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