In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth tips and suggestions on the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Essential Web Pages
- Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress
- Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Improving Website Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Website For SEO
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Excerpts – Create the description for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster page indexing
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, there are various plugins for WordPress that improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your posts and pages for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting or financial services site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some more WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This plugin can be used to set up and manage your own social network on your site.
- bbPress – Run a discussion forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – Send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard, without requiring a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your website.
(You can easily add social features to your site using free or inexpensive plugins)
Ways To Generate New Leads & Enquiries Using WordPress-Based Tools
Let’s take a look now at ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries.
Providing An Email Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is a great way to retain and grow your readership. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to provide special services or products to a select audience
- Provides new opportunities for improving interaction
- Provides you with other ways for subscribers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value content and offer users free gifts in exchange for their details. This can be a time-saving guide, checklists for handling tax, access to tax calculators, coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for prospective customers to get in touch. A contact form also allows users to report problems, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, send suggestions and more.
A contact form provides many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- 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
- Convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
Contact form 7 is a free plugin that lets you insert and manage multiple contact forms on your site, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can select which aspect of your business they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Maps
A map helps your visitors and customers find you.
Integrating maps (e.g. Google Maps), with your website also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map helps to improve local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Some of the most popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help To Improve Your Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Accounting Services Site
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides 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.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- CD
- Credit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you get a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WP Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
With this plugin you can place a custom stock ticker on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker includes several customizable ticker. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include height, width, background color, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font size, font family, text color, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for car loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
The 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 forms 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.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices. It even allows you to set up recurring billing. It can be expanded through both free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of your invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WordPress user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, and others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, creating 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, 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 complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticketing system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
The plugin 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 Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customer data and invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software allows you to get paid faster online by integrating with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a look at 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 For WordPress)
This premium theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, has several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
Accounting Pro can be expanded using premium add-ons.
For more details, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This one comes in a variety of 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 is responsive. Accountancy provides the features you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This premium WordPress theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, four color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It is a clean-looking, modern and fast-to-load theme.
Go here for more info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium theme was created for accounting businesses. Kathryn allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, various colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme can easily fit 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)
This premium WordPress theme was built 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 responsive (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your accounting services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials section, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme For WordPress)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme built for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding employee profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean-looking and loads fast.
More information:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This premium WordPress theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a unique, professional site using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
Divi’s page builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their web pages without editing any code.
(Divi Theme – Page Builder)
Divi 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 fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
The Corporation Theme from Elegant Themes 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. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has 6 unique color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Visit the theme website for more details about this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing advice or tax advice. 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.
For more details, go here:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WordPress Theme)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was specifically designed for financial companies, tax and finance advisors, and businesses offering tax services. This theme is designed to show your services professionally to help establish your professional reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business WP Theme)
This one was developed specifically for firms that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. The theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management, animated elements, and lots more.
Go here to learn more about using this theme:
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 WordPress plugins & themes that can improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your accounting or financial services site useful.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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