In Part One of this article on ways to improve your accounting business online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses
- Online Opportunities For Accounting Businesses
- Ways To Improve Your Website Pages
- Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
Your web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, you will learn ways to improve your business online using WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are lots of ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your articles to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set an excerpt that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Driving More Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are also a number of plugins for WordPress that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This plugin allows you to run your own social network on WordPress, with member profiles, user groups, messaging, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin allows you to set up and manage your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website or blog.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s take a look now at ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Provide An Email Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It provides several benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends 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 targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared online with others
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 time-saving guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for readers to get in touch. Visitors can send feedback, contact specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- They can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms into any page on your site, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Another feature to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map
A map helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a useful tool for several reasons:
- A map increases local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily and helps plan their trips better
- Shows location of events
(Maps help your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
How To Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic To Your Accounting Services Website Generation With WordPress Plugins
WordPress Plugins For Accounting Businesses
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of practical tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of 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 on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Leases
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
The plugin provides loads of 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 speed, symbols, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free calculator allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on automotive loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a 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 you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and many others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with ticketing system, client relationship management and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
The plugin supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools like document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, track 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 – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Financial Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress to grow your business online, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can expand Accounting Pro with premium add-ons.
Visit this website to learn more about this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This one offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This fully responsive (mobile-friendly) theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search optimized, and fast loading. It provides what you need without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for accounting businesses. The theme provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, many color choices, is easy to use, SEO friendly, 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 plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here to learn more this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
This is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
For more information, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all themes.
To learn more about this theme, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme For WordPress)
This one was specifically developed to make corporate sites look great.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design. It has 6 color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit the theme site:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium WordPress theme was specifically developed to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investment advice or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More info:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
Tax Help was developed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way to help build your business 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.
More information:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed for businesses that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, insurance, corporate, finance, accounting, loans, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and a lot more.
For more information, go here:
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 comprehensive guide has helped you learn ways of improving search engine optimization, improve user engagement and increase web traffic generation with WordPress plugins and themes.
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