In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accounting And Financial Businesses Face Online
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Web Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improving Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Improve Website Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is an important part of your business growth. In this section, we explore ways to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and increase web traffic generation using WordPress plugins & themes.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that will display in search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available a number of plugins that will improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic 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 XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to set up your own social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Set up your own online discussion forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Use this plugin to add social sharing features to your website.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
Let’s now take a look at ways to improve sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides several benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides you with additional ways for your content to be shared online with others
A proven way to attract subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a handy guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. Contact forms also let readers report issues, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenient for users
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and lets you create and manage multiple contact forms into any page or post, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospective clients can select the aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps, such as Google Maps, with your WordPress site also provides visitors with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Clients can better plan their visits and appointments
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are just some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add a widget that shows up to 20 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)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides a number of customizable features. Choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing colors, size, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. This is a great tool for vehicle loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification 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)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of your 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 PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and many others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, viewing 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as 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 customer data and invoices, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes - Accounting Businesses
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting businesses. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium theme is a turn-key theme designed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This inexpensive theme comes in a variety of styles and layouts to help give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, fast loading, and fully responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Your purchase price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This one is a premium WordPress child theme for the Genesis Framework that’s developed specifically for accountants. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of color options, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is 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 slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
Visit the theme website to learn more about this theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to help make your accounting site 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more information, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme developed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s a clean and fast-loading theme.
Visit this site to learn more about this theme:
Divi
(Divi WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a unique, professional website using its page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change 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 web pages without touching code.
(Divi WP Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes bar counter, blurb, circle counter, divider, gallery, login, portfolio, shop, social media follow, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was developed specifically to create great-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, six different unique color schemes, 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 full access to over 80 beautifully-designed themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed to help finance industry professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investment advice or tax advice. It includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
For more information, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those that offer tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally to help grow your business reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses the 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 Theme)
This theme was developed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animations, and a 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
We hope that you have found this guide on ways to improve your accounting or financial services website with WordPress useful.
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