In Part 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to grow your accounting business web presence, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Basic Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we will continue looking at more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site With Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Adding New Features And Functionality To Your Site With Plugins
- WP For Beginners – An Overview Of WP Themes
Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
Your web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section explores ways of improving your accounting or financial services business online using WordPress.
Optimize Your Website For Search Engines With WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that visitors will see in the search engine results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link internal content
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your site.
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site With WordPress Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available also a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few more WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – Set up your own social network on your WordPress site.
- bbPress – This free plugin lets you set up and run your own discussion forum on your WordPress site.
- E-Newsletter – Use this WordPress plugin to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase user engagement on your site.
- Floating Social – Easily add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online on your site.
(You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will discuss ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Adding A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user engagement
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared around with others
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter is to provide users with valuable information and offer them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Different forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin is easy to install and configure and allows you to insert multiple contact forms to your site, customize the forms and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select which aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Adding A Map
Maps help your visitors and clients find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- They improve local SEO
- Customers can better plan their meeting or appointments
- Shows location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and clients find you)
Popular map plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Payments
- Leases
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of 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 add a custom stock ticker to any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides several customizable features. You can choose from built-in skins or customize it yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customizations include speed, text, colours, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF invoice versions, create 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, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and several others.
The plugin lets you add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, view reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports different 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 – WordPress Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software lets you get paid faster by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Themes
To benefit the most from using WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accountancy businesses. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy 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 a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This premium WordPress theme offers a variety of styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and fast loading. It provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in the cost of purchasing.
Go here for more details:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website 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, 3 blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn – WordPress Theme)
This one is a premium 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 comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, various colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is 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.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was created to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements specifically designed to 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 responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details about using this theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this theme, visit this website:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using its page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and change the structure of their page without touching any code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 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 fully responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all stunning themes.
For more details, go here:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically to create great-looking corporate websites.
It has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, 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.
Visit this website for more information about using this WordPress theme:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
This one was built specifically to help finance professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing or tax help. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
To learn more about about this theme, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
Tax Help was built for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help establish your business reputation. It comes with different 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 – WordPress Theme)
This theme was built for businesses that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content, custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and a lot more.
For more details, 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 guide has helped you learn ways of improving SEO, improve user engagement and drive more visitors using plugins and themes.
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