In Part One of this guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided many practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Basic Pages
- Improving Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered below include:
- Improving Traffic
- Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Applications
- How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Tips For Accountants – Improving Your Business Online With WordPress Plugins and Themes
Your web traffic is a vital part of your online business growth. This section explores WordPress plugins & themes that improve SEO, improve user engagement and generate more visitors.
Optimize Your Website For SEO Using WordPress
There are loads of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want your article pages to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Create categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will show in search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify other search directories whenever a new post is published on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some more fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run an online social community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Run a community forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your site.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
In this section we’ll discuss how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your business.
Add A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving user engagement
- Provides other ways for readers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide users with content of high value and offer them a free gift in exchange for their details. This could be a special report, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. Contact forms also let users report issues, contact specific departments, request quotes, send suggestions for new services or products and more.
A contact form provides several benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Can be added to any post or page
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Convenience for users
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
Contact Form 7 allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms to your pages and posts, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can choose the department they want to contact. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map Integration
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map helps to increase local SEO
- Allows customers to better plan their meeting and appointments
- Displays location of events
(Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website that will immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- CD
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
With this plugin you can place a custom stock ticker on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin offers a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in skins or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customizations include colours, size, speed, text, and symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for calculating car loans, property loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
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)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF invoice versions, provide quotes, create 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, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and several others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, inserting pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, showing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail 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 WP Plugin)
This is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with ticket system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Client Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports international languages, is fully customizable and provides additional 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 Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress 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 themes themes available for accounting. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has 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-resized images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded with premium add-ons.
Go here for more info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme has a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and one year of support.
For more information, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
Visit this site for more information about using this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This one is created for accounting businesses. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, a variety of colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is 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.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and layout elements specifically designed to make your accounting business site look professional without looking dull. 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 accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme built 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 adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about using this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional website using the page builder or beautiful pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily change the structure of their pages without editing a single line of code.
(Divi Theme For WordPress – Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include bar counter, call to action, contact form, divider, gallery, number counter, post title, sidebar, social media follow, video slider, fullwidth header, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ sleek business themes.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was designed specifically to make corporate websites look great.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a eye-catching slider, blog design, 6 different unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
Go here for more details about using this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed specifically to help finance professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investment advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here for more details:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
Tax Help was developed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those that provide tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help grow your business reputation. It provides a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
For more information, go here:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed specifically for firms that provide financial services such as consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. It 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 options, color management, animations, and a lot more.
More info:
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
We hope that you have found this comprehensive guide on ways to improve SEO, improve user engagement and generate more visitors using plugins and themes helpful.
Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business …
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
***