In Part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting business presence online, we provided practical tips and suggestions on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Essential Website Pages
- Ways To Improve Your Web Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improve Web Traffic Using WordPress
- How To Generate New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Creating Better User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic
To learn more about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
Tips For Improving Traffic With WordPress
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. In this section, we discuss ways to improve your accounting business online using WordPress.
Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines (SEO) Using WordPress
There are so many ways that WordPress helps optimize your accounting or financial services website for search engines:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to create search engine-optimized URLS for your article pages (called posts).
- Post Tags – WordPress lets you select the keywords that you want search engines to index your articles for.
- Categories – Add SEO-friendly categories for keeping your content organized and easy to find.
- Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose descriptions for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search results.
- Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily create internal links for faster indexing of your web pages
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic With WordPress Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, there are dozens of plugins for WordPress that improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site.
For example, you can use the plugins below to improve your SEO:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- WP Tree – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO)
Other ways to improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more visitors to your business are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social features. Here are some plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Use BuddyPress to set up a social community on your website.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up a discussion forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – Send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard.
- Disqus – use this WordPress plugin to power discussions and helps to increase engagement on your site.
- Monarch – Use this WordPress plugin to add social buttons and features that allow visitors to share your content online to your website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using WordPress plugins)
Generate New Leads & Enquiries
Let’s now discuss how to improve your sales and generate more leads and enquiries for your accounting or financial services business.
Add A Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a subscriber list. Adding email newsletters] provides many benefits and advantages including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides useful updates
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases engagement with your users
- Provides you with another way for your content to be shared around with others
An effective way to get your visitors to subscribe is to provide them with high value content and give them something valuable for free in exchange for their personal details. This can be a useful report, checklists for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective customers to contact you. Users can report issues, ask questions to specific departments, ask for a quote, give suggestions and more.
Contact forms provide many benefits and advantages, like:
- Reduces spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what gets sent to you
- You can keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenient for site visitors
A popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7)
This free plugin lets you create and manage multiple contact forms, customize your form and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is to segment your contact form so prospects can choose which topic they want to discuss. This ensures that visitors’ requests reach the right person.
Provide Maps
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Maps are a useful tool for several reasons:
- They help to increase local SEO
- Helps visitors find your office easily
- Display location of events
(Adding maps to your site 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
Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using Plugins
WordPress Financial Plugins
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your accounting or financial services site to immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin)
This plugin provides a free collection of 400+ calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. It supports internationalization
Most of them aren’t focused specifically 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 For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, post or page with shortcodes.
This plugin provides a number of customizable features. 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 individual categories.
Appearance customization features include size, symbols, colors, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for auto loans, real estate, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WordPress Plugin – Loan Calculator)
Finance Calculator also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create a form that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice WP Plugin)
WP-Invoice lets you send itemized invoices to clients.
WP-Invoice integrates billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with 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, 2Checkout, USAePay, and others.
Plugin features include adding custom payments and charges, creating pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly viewing invoice status and progression, filtering and finding invoices, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating e-mail notification templates, viewing 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management system includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with support ticketing system, CRM and many added features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple 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 – WordPress Plugin)
iBilling is a scalable business software that lets you manage customers and invoices, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software Plugin For WordPress – Client Invoicing)
iBilling integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services – WordPress Themes
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting. Here is a list of some of the best accountancy 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 website design.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This premium WordPress theme is an inexpensive turn-key theme designed for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, offers several page templates, custom menu features, a content composer (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resizing for images, and lots more.
Accounting Pro can be customized through premium add-ons.
Go here to learn more about using this WordPress theme:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WP Theme)
This premium theme comes in a variety of built-in styles and layouts that helps give your accounting website a professional look and feel.
It includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, and more. It’s lightweight, search optimized, fast loading, and fully responsive. Accountancy Theme provides what you need without bloating your theme. Free updates and 1 year of support is included with your purchase.
More information:
Accounting
(Accounting WP Theme)
This one includes a drag-and-drop builder so you can design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different types of headers, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, custom slider, three different blog types, and is responsive. Accountancy looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WP Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was developed specifically for accounting businesses. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and provides a slider, multiple layouts, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, many colors, is easy to use, inexpensive, search engine optimized, and is fully responsive. Although it could easily suit any profession, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy WordPress responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More info:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was created with the idea of professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., is designed specifically to make your accounting business website look professional without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s responsive and includes pages for your services, contact section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
More info:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme designed specifically for professionals such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for employee profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean-looking and loads fast.
Go here for more info:
Divi
(Divi)
This theme is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. Divi lets you create a professional site using the page builder or pre-made layouts. You can modify your layout to your heart’s content.
Divi’s page builder transforms elements into visual building blocks, allowing you to understand and easily edit the structure of their pages without editing any code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 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. It is responsive and completely customizable. Elegant Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all professional themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
This theme from Elegant Themes was specifically created to create good-looking corporate websites.
It has a page-based home page design with a prominent slider, blog design, 6 unique different color schemes, 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 full access to all beautifully-designed themes.
For more information, go here:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme was developed specifically to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing advice or tax help. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, widgets and multiple shortcodes, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
To learn more about using this theme, visit this website:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and firms that offer tax assistance. This theme is designed to showcase your services professionally and help grow your professional reputation. It comes with a range of blog styles, uses a drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
To learn more about this theme, visit the theme site:
Finance Business
(Finance Business Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress was built specifically for businesses that provide any type of financial service such as consulting, tax help, finance, insurance, corporate, loans, accounting, and more. It includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin. It also has around one hundred shortcodes that let you add charts and financial content. It also includes a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management, animated elements, and a lot more.
More information:
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 of improving your website with WordPress themes and plugins useful.
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