In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following topics:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy
- Basic Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic
- Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Site Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Functionality To Your Web Site With WP Plugins
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
Online Business Tips For Accountants – Improving Your Business Online With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) With WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Post Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories the moment a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run your own social networking community on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This plugin helps you set up your own community forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your website or blog.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. It provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides another way for subscribers to share your content
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with information of high value and give them a free gift in exchange for their personal details. This can be an exclusive report, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Readers can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and lets you add multiple contact forms, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is supported.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the department they want to contact. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Map Integration
Maps help your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a great tool for several reasons:
- A map improves 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 For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
WordPress Plugins - Accounting Services
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 visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Interest rate
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Credit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(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 a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin offers a number of customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colours, speed, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free calculator lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to a specified email address.
Other features of this plugin include showing 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 Plugin For WordPress)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out 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 from clients, create PDF invoices, provide 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and several others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, accessing 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)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing management system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, 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 WP Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting – WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menus, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
This theme has a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help 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 loads fast. Accountancy provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The cost of purchase includes free updates and one year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme for WordPress was created specifically for accounting businesses. The theme comes with multiple layouts, slider, 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, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession you like, 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.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically 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 responsive and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and fast-loading.
Visit this website to learn more about this theme:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection of WordPress themes. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their page without editing code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes modules such as audio player, call to action, contact form, email optin, filterable portfolio, map, portfolio, sidebar, social media follow, video, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ themes.
Go here to learn more this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was developed specifically to create great-looking corporate websites.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme was specifically designed to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services such as investing or tax advice. The 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)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those offering tax services. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help build your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This one was specifically built for organizations that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
To learn more about this theme, visit this site:
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 ways of improving your accounting or financial services website using WordPress themes and plugins.
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