In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Essential Pages
- Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improve Traffic
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
- WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Add New Features And Functionality To Your Web Site With Plugins
- WP For Newbies – An Overview Of WP Themes
Improving Web Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Post Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create descriptions for your posts that will display to search engine users.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for better search results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress community makes available quite a number of plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for indexing by search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some powerful plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – This free plugin helps you run your own social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Set up your own forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – This WordPress plugin lets you add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your pages and posts.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries
This section will show you how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries online.
Provide A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to grow and retain your readership. Adding an email newsletter provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides practical tips and advice
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to provide special products or services to a select audience
- Increases interaction
- Provides additional ways for your content to be shared around with new potential customers
One of the things you can do to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with high value information and give them free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, discount coupons, access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to get in touch. Users can send feedback, contact specific departments, ask for quotes, send suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide several benefits and advantages, like:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- They can be added to any post or page
- Looks professional
- Convenient for visitors
One of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free contact form plugin lets you add multiple contact forms, customize the form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Another feature you may want to consider is adding sections to your contact form so users can choose which topic they want to discuss. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Add A Map
Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps (e.g. Google Maps) to your site also provides users with many benefits, such as:
- They increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Shows location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Popular map plugins include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic
Accounting WordPress Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for users. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. It also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few you can use for:
- Mortgage
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Credit
- And 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 show as many portfolios as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WP Plugin)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any page, post, or sidebar using shortcodes.
This plugin offers loads of customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, background color, opacity, scroll speed, number of stocks displayed at one time, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator)
This free plugin allows your users to calculate indicative repayments. It’s great for calculating repayments on vehicle loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a notification 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)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin integrates billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures, create PDF versions of invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, Interkassa, and others.
You can add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification email templates, view 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, helpdesk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
The plugin supports international 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)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoice)
iBilling lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Themes
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 accounting themes available. These themes allow you to 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 Theme For WordPress)
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 menu features, a content composer (gives you an improved WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme)
This premium WordPress theme has a variety of styles and layouts to help make your accounting website look and feel professional.
This fully responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and fast loading. Accountancy provides what you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and one year of support is included in your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
Accounting Theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy is a clean-looking, modern and fast loading theme.
More information:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically for accounting services. Kathryn 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 choices, is easy to use, search engine friendly, 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 must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – Theme For WordPress)
This theme was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to make your accounting business site look professional while not looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s fully responsive and includes pages for your services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate WordPress Theme)
This is a corporate theme specifically designed for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean-looking and fast-loading theme.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
Divi is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create a professional site using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily redesign the structure of their pages without touching a single line of code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. Modules include multiple layouts, a slider, you can place pricing tables, testimonials, call-to-action, and lots more. Divi is fully responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 stunning themes.
More info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This one was specifically designed to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider. It also has a blog design. It has six color schemes. It also has multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
Adviser was specifically built to help those in the financial industry to build trust through clean web design. It’s ideal for those that provide services such as investing or tax help. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and a drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help)
This one was specifically developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those that offer tax services. It’s designed to show your services professionally and help establish your professional reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses a 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 Theme For WordPress)
Finance Business was designed for organizations that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, insurance, finance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. This 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, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animations, 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
We hope that you have found this guide on ways of improving your accounting or financial services website with WordPress helpful.
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