In Part 1 of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we covered the following topics:
- Challenges Accountants Face Online
- Opportunities For Professional Accountants
- Your Website Pages
- Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website
In this section, we continue exploring more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Areas covered include:
- Ways Of Improving Traffic
- Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Create Better User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see the articles below:
Ways Of Improving Traffic
Web traffic is an important part of your online business growth. This section explores ways to improve your website with WordPress.
Optimizing Your Site For SEO
There are so many ways WordPress can help to improve your website’s SEO:
- Search Engine-Friendly URLs – Set the permalinks to use the title of the post.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your posts for.
- Categories – Add search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Excerpts – Set descriptions for your posts that will show in search results.
- Images – title images with keywords for better search engine results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily link your content to other posts and pages
- Post Notification – Set up your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your site.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic Using Plugins
As well as the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available a number of plugins that improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin (lists all of your pages and posts for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO)
Other ways to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase engagement and drive more traffic to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few more powerful plugins that can help (many of the plugins listed below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – Run an online social networking community on your WordPress website, with member profiles, messaging, user groups, activity streams, and more.
- bbPress – This free plugin helps you run a forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress site.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user 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 website.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generate Leads & Enquiries
Let’s discuss now how to improve sales and generate leads and enquiries online.
Providing A Newsletter
Providing an email newsletter is an excellent way to build a list of subscribers. It] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps readers from forgetting about you
- Keeps readers updated
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special services or products to a select audience
- Increases user interaction
- Provides additional ways for subscribers to share your content
One of the best ways to get visitors to become subscribers is to provide them with content of high value and offer them free gifts or bonus items in exchange for their details. This could be a time-saving guide, tips for handling tax, access to financial calculators, coupons, access to courses, contests, etc.
Provide Contact Forms
Contact forms provide an easy and simple way for prospective customers to contact you. A contact form also lets readers provide feedback, ask questions to specific departments, request quotes, and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages including:
- Reducing spam
- Set up automated responses
- Gives you control over what is sent to you
- Allows you to keep your email address private
- Contact forms can be added to any page or post
- Looks professional
- Convenience for visitors
One of the most popular contact form plugins is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 Plugin)
This free plugin is easy to install and set up and allows you to insert multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
Supports international languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Something to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospective clients can choose the topic they are contacting you about. This ensures that contact form requests reach the right person.
Maps
Adding maps to your site helps your visitors and clients find you.
A map is a great tool for several reasons:
- A map improves local SEO
- Visitors can find your office easily and helps clients can plan their appointments better
- Shows location of events
(Adding a map to your site helps your visitors and clients find you)
Below are some plugins that let you embed, customize and display maps on your site:
- Google Maps
- Advanced Google Maps Plugin for WordPress
- WP Google Maps
- Comprehensive Google Map Plugin
WordPress Plugins & Themes That Can Help Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress provides a number of plugins you can add to your accounting or financial services website that will immediately make available a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of the plugins you can choose from:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators Plugin For WordPress)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. Internationalization is supported.
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused on accounting, but there are quite a few for:
- Interest rate
- Loans
- CD
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin)
With this plugin you get a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin lets you place custom stock tickers on any post, page or sidebar using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker comes with several customizable features. You can choose from built-in themes or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also create custom stocks for specific categories.
Appearance customization features include colours, speed, text, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin lets your visitors calculate indicative repayments. This is a useful tool for auto loans, property loans, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculator)
This plugin also contains an application form that will send a message to a specified email address.
It will show payment protection, calculate 12 to 60 months loans and create forms that can be placed in any page or post.
For more details, go here}:
WP-Invoice
(WP-Invoice Plugin)
WP-Invoice is ideal for WordPress business users with clients to bill.
WP-Invoice lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send itemized invoices, set up recurring billing and expand functionality with both free and premium add-ons that let you manage locations, accept electronic signatures from clients, create PDF versions of invoices, create quotes, create single-page checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into the WP user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with payment processors like PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and several 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, seeing invoice receipts and invoice history, creating notification email templates, displaying reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, 10 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 complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, helpdesk with support ticketing management system, client relationship management and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application Plugin – Client Invoice)
The plugin supports different languages, is fully customizable and provides additional 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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage client data and invoices, tracks your company’s net worth and cash flow, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Invoicing)
It lets you get paid faster online by integrating with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Financial WordPress Themes
To get the most benefit out of growing your business online with WordPress, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a list of some of the best WordPress themes available for accounting. With the themes listed below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro)
This is a turn-key theme built 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 (which improves on the standard WordPress editor), a sidebar manager, auto-resized images, and lots more.
You can customize Accounting Pro by installing premium add-ons.
More info:
Accountancy
(Accountancy WordPress Theme)
This theme has a variety of styles and layouts to give your accounting site a professional look and feel.
This mobile-friendly theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial section, it’s lightweight, SEO friendly, and loads fast. Accountancy provides what your business needs without bloating your theme. The price includes free updates and 1 year of support.
More info:
Accounting
(Accounting)
Accounting includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, 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.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This one is built for accounting services. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS and comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various color options, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit 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 information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme)
Accounting WordPress Theme was built to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. It features an authoritative color scheme and elements designed specifically to help make your accounting site look professional without looking dull. It’s a turn-key installation but you can still modify it if you want. It’s 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.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
WP Advocate is a corporate theme designed specifically for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the theme’s bundled images or upload your own. WP Advocate also includes a custom post type for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is clean and fast-loading.
For more details, go here:
Divi
(Divi Theme)
This theme is one of the most flexible themes in Elegant Themes‘ entire theme collection. You can create any style of professional site you want using the page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout as much as you need.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and easily change the structure of their pages without touching any code.
(Divi – Flexible Page Builder)
Divi has 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has audio player, call to action, contact form, countdown timer, filterable portfolio, login, portfolio, pricing table, social media follow, text, fullwidth image, fullwidth menu, fullwidth post title, and more.. It is fully responsive and completely customizable. Prices start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
Visit the theme site to learn more about using this theme:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was created specifically to create good-looking corporate websites.
This theme has a sleek page-based home page design with a nice 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. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to 80+ beautifully-designed themes.
More information:
Adviser
(Adviser – WordPress Theme)
This one was built specifically to help finance professionals build trust online through clean web design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. The Adviser theme includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications. It also includes a built-in lease calculator. It includes multiple shortcodes and widgets, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
Go here to learn more this theme:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
Tax Help WordPress Theme was designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses providing tax services. Tax Help is designed to show your services professionally to help establish your business reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
More info:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
Finance Business WordPress Theme was designed specifically for firms that provide financial services such as tax help, consulting, corporate, insurance, finance, loans, accounting, and more. The 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 options, color management, animated elements, and a lot more.
Go here to learn more this WordPress 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, this article has helped you learn how to improve your accounting or financial services website using WordPress themes and plugins.
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