In Part One of this guide on ways to grow your accounting business presence online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Services
- Essential Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Web Traffic
- Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Your Accounting Website – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors With WordPress Plugins & Themes
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimize Your Site For SEO Using WordPress
There are loads of ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Post Categories – Create SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for better page indexing
- Pinging – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Traffic To Your Website Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of WordPress plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your accounting or financial services site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you set up and run your own social network on your website.
- bbPress – Run your own online forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this plugin to add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your posts and pages.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress-Based Applications
Let’s discuss now how to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is an excellent way to build a subscriber list. Adding an email newsletter provides several benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing interaction
- Provides you with additional ways for readers to share your content
A proven way to attract newsletter subscribers is to provide high value information and offer users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, tips for handling tax, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch. A contact form also lets visitors provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, send suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- More convenient for users
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets you add 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 submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so users can choose which aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Adding A Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their visits and appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Here are just some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your website:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
Financial WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting 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 WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin installs a widget that displays up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you place a custom stock ticker on any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes a number of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself to match your website. You can also create custom stocks for individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, font size, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator allows users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
It will show 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 you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. WP-Invoice can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, 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 others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification e-mail templates, accessing reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like 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 customer 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 Plugin For WordPress – Invoice)
It lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting firms. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium WordPress theme is a 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 (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded through premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This premium WordPress theme offers a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, SEO friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. Accountancy provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included with your purchase.
Go here to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
For more information, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built for accounting businesses. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, call to action boxes, many color choices, is easy to use, search engine optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme can easily fit any profession you want it to, 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.
For more information, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
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., is specifically designed to help give your accounting website a professional look. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
This is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and loads fast.
Go here for more information:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a unique, professional site using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include accordion, call to action, circle counter, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, map, person, shop, tabs, video, fullwidth header, fullwidth menu, fullwidth slider, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation)
This premium theme for WordPress from Elegant Themes was designed specifically to create great-looking corporate websites.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with 6 color schemes. It also has 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 all stunning themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically designed to help businesses in the financial industry to build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investing or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically developed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that offer tax services. It’s designed to show your services in a professional way to help establish your business reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
Finance Business Theme was specifically built for firms that provide any type of financial service such as tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, a custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management, animated elements, and a lot more.
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
Hopefully, this article has helped you learn how to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation with WordPress plugins & themes.
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