In Part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting web presence, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Ways To Improve Your Web Pages
- Tips For Improving Your Content
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic With WordPress
- How To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic Using Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- Using WordPress Plugins To Improve Your Site’s Capability
- A Newbie’s Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes
Tips For Improving Traffic
Your web traffic is vital to your online business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimize Your Site For Search Engines With WordPress
There are many ways that WordPress helps improve SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the web address of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Post Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for archiving and organizing your content.
- Post Excerpts – Create an excerpt that search engines will display in their search results.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your images for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that lets you easily link internal content
- Pinging – Set up your WordPress site to automatically notify other search directories immediately upon publishing new content on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress developer community makes available various plugins that will improve your website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your website.
For example, you can use 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 can improve your website’s search engine optimization)
Other WordPress plugins you can use to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – Run a social networking community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – This free plugin helps you run a forum on WordPress.
- E-Newsletter – This plugin lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP site.
- Disqus – This plugin lets you power discussions and increases 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 site.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
Tips For Generating Leads & Enquiries With WordPress
In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Adding A Newsletter
Adding an email newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding a newsletter provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Provides regular opportunities for increasing interaction
- Provides other ways for your content to be shared online with new potential clients
An effective strategy for enticing visitors to become subscribers is to provide high value information and give users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a handy guide, checklists for handling finances, access to tax calculators, discount coupons, access to videos, contests, etc.
Add Contact Forms
A contact form provides an easy and simple way for readers to contact you. A contact form also allows readers to provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- 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 website
- Convenience for site visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This plugin allows you to insert multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so users can select the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Map Integration
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
Maps are great tools for several reasons:
- Maps increase local SEO
- Visitors can easily find you
- Displays location of events
(A map helps your visitors and customers find you)
Here are some of the more popular plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your WordPress site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With WordPress Plugins & Themes
Accounting Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting site to immediately add a range of practical tools for users. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can display on your website and embed into your posts, pages, 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:
- 401k
- Payments
- CD
- Debit
- And more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This free plugin gives you a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can add a custom stock ticker to any page, post, or sidebar with shortcodes.
This plugin comes with several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in themes or customize these yourself to match the look and feel of your website. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Appearance customization features include width, height, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed simultaneously, font family, text color, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets your users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for car loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send 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)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send out itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quote creation, 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, and others.
WP-Invoice lets you add custom payments and charges, insert pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create notification e-mail templates, view reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 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 is a complete business management system that includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with ticketing system, client relationship management and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different 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, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, we recommend choosing a theme specifically for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accounting themes available. These themes allow you to have a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro 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 menus, 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 through premium add-ons.
Visit the theme website for more information about using this theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, SEO friendly, loads fast, and is responsive. It provides what you need without bloating your theme. The cost of purchasing includes free updates and one year of support.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your site any way you want. The theme also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom admin panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme was created for accounting services. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true content management system and comes with a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, many color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive. 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 theme, visit the theme website:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was developed with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements specifically designed to give your accounting business site a professional look 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 details section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
Visit the theme website to learn more this WordPress theme:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and fast-loading.
More info:
Divi
(Divi WordPress Theme)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. Divi lets you create a professional website using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their page without editing any code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. These include audio player, blog, circle counter, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, number counter, portfolio, sidebar, testimonial, text, fullwidth image, fullwidth portfolio, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ professional themes.
Go here for more details:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This premium WordPress theme from Elegant Themes was specifically created to create good-looking corporate websites.
The Corporation has a sleek page-based home page design with a prominent slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It comes with six different color schemes. It also has multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to over 80 professional themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This one was specifically built to help finance industry professionals build trust with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services like investing or tax advice. The theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed for financial organizations, tax and finance advisors, and those offering tax assistance. Tax Help is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help build your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Visit this website to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business – WordPress Theme)
This theme was specifically developed for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, accounting, loans, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around 100 shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes a 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 how to improve your accounting or financial services business online with WordPress themes and plugins.
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