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 Accounting & Financial Services Face Online
- Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy
- Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- How To Improve Web Traffic
- How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Enhance Your Blog’s Capability
- WordPress For Business – An Overview Of Themes
Your Accounting Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
Your web traffic is an integral part of your business growth. This section explores ways of improving search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your website using WordPress plugins.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will display 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 link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Web Traffic
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available quite a number of plugins that improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing. Here are some more powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free plugin allows you to set up a social network on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – bbPress can be used to set up your own discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Add social sharing features on your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section we show you ways to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Adding An Email Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. It] provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful information and advice
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides an additional way for readers to share your content
An effective strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a useful report, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Provide A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch with you. Users can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your site
- Convenience for visitors
A popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin For WordPress)
This free contact form plugin allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms to your website, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can select the department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- They increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the more popular Google Maps plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site to immediately add 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 over 400 calculators that you can display on your website. Internationalization is supported.
Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- Tax
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This plugin gives you a widget that shows up to 20 different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
The plugin provides loads of customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your site. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing width, height, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, font size, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for automotive loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator 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 – WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of invoices, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, easily filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, displaying 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple languages, is fully customizable and provides powerful tools such as document management, to do app, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes listed below you can own 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, custom menus, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This inexpensive theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts to help make your accounting site look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and one year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
To learn more about about this theme, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This one is a child theme for the Genesis Framework designed specifically for accountants. The theme provides multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, various color choices, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive. Although this theme could easily suit any profession you want it to, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
For more details, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was developed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is 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 mobile-friendly and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
To learn more about about using this WordPress theme, visit the theme website:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
More information:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a professional website using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their page without touching any code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
Divi comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and fully customizable. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all themes.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme website:
The Corporation
(The Corporation – WordPress Theme)
This one from Elegant Themes was specifically created to create great-looking corporate sites.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, six different color schemes, 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 80+ stunning themes.
Go here for more information about this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This one was developed specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust through clean design. It’s ideal for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax help. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
Tax Help was developed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and those that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way to help establish your professional reputation. It provides different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more details, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
Finance Business WordPress Theme was developed specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service including consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management features, animated elements, and lots 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, you have found this comprehensive guide on ways of improving your accounting or financial services website using WordPress helpful.
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