In Part One of this step-by-step guide on ways to grow your accounting business presence online, we covered the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Opportunities For Accountants In The Digital Economy
- Basic Web Pages
- How To Improve The Content On Your Site
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered include:
- Improve Web Traffic With WordPress
- Ways To Generate Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Tips For Improving Web Traffic Using WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section discusses how to improve your accounting business online with WordPress plugins and themes.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- URLs – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – Specify the keywords that you want your article pages (posts) to be indexed for in the search engines.
- Categories – Create categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose an excerpt that will show to search engine users.
- Images – title images used in your content with keywords for improved search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster indexing of your content
- Post Notification – WordPress can be configured to automatically notify (ping) other search directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
WordPress Plugins That Can Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WordPress development community makes available various plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.
For example, here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s SEO)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting or financial services site’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social sharing features. Here are a few useful WordPress plugins that can help:
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress can be used to run your own social network on WordPress.
- bbPress – bbPress allows you to set up your own forum on your WordPress website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter allows you to send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases engagement on your website.
- Floating Social – Use this WordPress plugin to add powerful social sharing features and buttons to your website or blog.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is an excellent way to grow and retain your readership. It] provides many benefits including:
- Sends targeted traffic
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a highly targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides additional opportunities for your content to be shared online with other prospective clients
A proven strategy for attracting new subscribers to your newsletter is to provide high value information and give users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for handling finances, access to tax calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Adding A Contact Form
A contact form makes it easy and simple for prospective customers to get in touch with you. Readers can raise problems, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions for improvements and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reduces spam
- Set up automated responses
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Can be added to any page or post
- Improves the professional look of your website
- Is convenient for users
One of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This plugin allows you to insert and manage multiple contact forms, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and Akismet spam filtering is also supported.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they want to discuss. This will help you to get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding a map helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your website also provides users with a number of benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Show location of events
(Adding maps to your website helps your visitors and customers find you)
Some of the most popular Google Maps plugins for WordPress include:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
Accounting And Financial Services WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting website to immediately add a range of practical tools for visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed them into your pages, posts, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of them aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- 401k
- Loans
- Tax
- Equity
- And lots more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes)
This plugin gives you a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker)
This plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with a number of customizable ticker. Choose from built-in themes or customize these yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your website. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scrolling speed, opacity, number of stocks displayed at one time, text color, font size, font family, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free calculator lets your users calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for vehicle loans, real estate loans, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculators)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that sends a message to the email address you specify.
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 WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress site owners with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send clients itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with free and premium add-ons that let you manage business, accept electronic signatures from clients, 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 payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, USAePay, and many others.
WP-Invoice features include adding custom payments and charges, adding pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating email notification templates, accessing 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 knowledgebase and support ticket system, client relationship management and many additional features.
(All In One Business Management Application WP Plugin – Client Invoicing)
All In One Business Management Application supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional tools such as document management, notice board, and more.
For more details, go here}:
iBilling – Accounting And Billing Software
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, track your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoice)
iBilling integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
WordPress Accounting Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, we recommend choosing a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Below is a list of some of the best themes themes available for accounting. These themes allow you to own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress is a turn-key theme for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s a responsive theme with a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, a custom menu feature, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can customize Accounting Pro through premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy – WordPress Theme)
Accountancy Theme comes with a variety of built-in styles and layouts to make your accounting website look and feel professional.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, and more. It’s lightweight, search engine friendly, fast loading, and is responsive. It provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in your purchase.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting Theme For WordPress)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive (mobile-friendly). Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
Go here to learn more about this theme:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed for accounting services. It has multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, a variety of color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it 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.
For more details about using this WordPress theme, visit this website:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This theme was designed to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is specifically designed to make your accounting website 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 (mobile-friendly) and includes pages for your accounting services, contact form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials section, and a blog.
Go here for more details:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate)
This is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, visit this site:
Divi
(Divi Theme For WordPress)
This is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ entire collection. You can create a unique, professional site using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and edit the structure of their web pages without editing code.
(Divi – WordPress Theme – Page Builder)
It has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has audio player, call to action, circle counter, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, map, post title, slider, tabs, video slider, fullwidth image, fullwidth map, fullwidth slider, and more.. It is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ stunning themes.
Go here for more information about this WordPress theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WordPress Theme)
The Corporation was created specifically to make corporate websites look great.
The Corporation has a page-based home page design with a prominent, flashy slider, blog design, 6 different color schemes, 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 access to all stunning themes.
For more details, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically to help professionals in the financial industry to build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for those that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. It 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.
Visit the theme site for more details about using this WordPress theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help WP Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that provide tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services in a professional way and help grow your business reputation. It has different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and many custom shortcodes.
Go here for more info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
This theme was developed specifically for businesses that provide financial services including consulting, tax help, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content. It also includes the custom drag-and-drop composer, two premium sliders, page settings, color management, animated elements, and a whole 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
Hopefully, this article has helped you learn ways to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic with WordPress plugins.
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