In Part One of this article on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we covered 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 Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors With WordPress Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Ways Of Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section we explore ways to help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For SEO Using WordPress
There are many ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed by in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that will display in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available various plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your site’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can add to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are a few more useful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress allows you to set up a social network on WordPress, with member profiles, activity streams, messaging, user groups, and more.
- bbPress – This free WordPress plugin helps you run your own community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your website or blog.
- Monarch – Add powerful social sharing features and buttons on your website.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate More Leads & Enquiries
Let’s take a look now at how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. It provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared around with others
One of the best ways to get visitors to subscribe is to provide high value information and give users something for free in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, membership access to videos, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch. Users can raise problems, contact specific departments, request a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits, like:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to create multiple contact forms on your pages and posts, customize your form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is also supported.
Another option to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can select the topic they want to discuss. This helps visitors get the comment to the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find you easily
- Show location of events
(Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display Google 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 Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website 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 over 400 calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Leases
- Debit
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
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 like.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin)
With this plugin you can place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin includes several customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to individual categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scrolling speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a great financial tool for calculating automotive loans, property, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculators)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification 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 WordPress Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It also allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, 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, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and several others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, accessing 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)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports multiple 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 – WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoicing, 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 Plugin – Invoice)
It integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best themes themes available for accounting firms. With the themes listed below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes and save hundreds to thousands of dollars on the cost of web design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro WP Theme)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme developed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can customize this theme by installing premium add-ons.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This one offers 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, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, loads fast, and is responsive. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in the cost of purchase.
Visit the theme site to learn more this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme was developed for accounting businesses. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with a slider, multiple layouts, 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, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Although this theme could easily suit any profession, 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 about this WordPress theme:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed with the idea of 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 site 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 section, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a free corporate theme developed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It includes a custom post type adding employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about using this theme, visit this site:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create a unique, professional website using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. This includes multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is responsive and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 professional themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation Theme from Elegant Themes was specifically designed to make corporate sites look good.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design. It comes with six color schemes. It also comes with 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 over 80 themes.
More info:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically built to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s ideal for those that provide services like investment advice or tax help. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally to help establish your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme)
This one was designed for businesses that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, corporate, finance, insurance, accounting, loans, and more. Finance Business includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and lots 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 guide has helped you learn ways to improve your accounting website using WordPress themes and plugins.
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