In Part One of this comprehensive article on ways to grow your accounting business presence online, we covered the following topics:
- Online Challenges For Accountants
- Online Opportunities For Accountants
- Improving Your Website Pages
- How To Improve Your Content
In this section, we discuss more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Ways To Improve Web Traffic
- Generate More Leads & Enquiries
- Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, see these articles:
Ways To Improve Web Traffic
Web traffic is vital to your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines Using WordPress
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve your accounting or financial services website’s SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – configure the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – Choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Categories – Add categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – WordPress lets you compose the description for your posts that search engines will display.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for better search engine results.
- Internal Linking – WordPress provides a built-in feature that allows you to easily create internal links for faster indexing of pages
- Post Notification – Configure your site to automatically notify (ping) other search directories as soon as a new post is published on your website.
Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors To Your Site With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP development community makes available a number of plugins that improve SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site.
For example, you can install the plugins below to improve your website’s search engine optimization:
- Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress XML sitemap plugin (for search engines)
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin
(A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization)
Other things you can do to improve your accounting website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your website are to add a forum, newsletters, comments, and social sharing features. Here are a few fantastic WordPress plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below can be downloaded at no cost):
- BuddyPress – BuddyPress helps you set up and run a social networking community on WordPress.
- bbPress – Run your own community forum on your site.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send professional email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WP dashboard, without a 3rd party subscription.
- Disqus – Disqus lets you power discussions and increases user engagement on your website or blog.
- Floating Social – Add social sharing features to your posts and pages.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
Generating New Leads & Enquiries
In this section we will show you how to improve your sales and generate new leads and enquiries online.
Add An Email Newsletter
Providing a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding email newsletters] provides several benefits including:
- Drives targeted traffic to your site
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides a targeted marketing channel
- Allows you to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engagement with users
- Provides you with additional opportunities for your content to be shared with others
A proven strategy for attracting newsletter subscribers is to provide users with valuable information and offer them something for free in exchange for their details. This could be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to courses, contests, etc.
Add A Contact Form
Contact forms make it easy and simple for prospective clients to contact you. Readers can report concerns, contact specific departments, request quotes, give suggestions for new services or products and more.
Contact forms provide a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- 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 site
- Is convenient for visitors
A very popular WordPress contact form plugin is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 – WordPress Plugin)
This plugin lets you insert multiple contact forms on your site, customize your forms and the mail contents, add fields, and more.
International languages, Ajax-powered submissions, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering is supported.
Another option you may want to consider is to add sections to your contact form so prospects can choose the aspect of your business they are contacting your company about. This ensures that visitors get the comment to the right person.
Maps
Adding a map to your website helps your visitors and clients find you.
Inserting maps, such as Google Maps, into your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- Maps help to improve local SEO
- Visitors can find you more easily
- Display 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 Traffic Generation
Accounting And Financial Services Plugins For WordPress
WordPress lets you add a number of plugins to your site that will immediately add a range of functional tools for site visitors. Here are just some of these:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators – WordPress Plugin)
This is a free collection of over 400 calculators that you can provide to users on your website and embed into your pages, posts, 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
- Rate of return
- Tax
- Equity
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin)
This plugin lets you add a widget that displays a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can display as many portfolios as you like.
(Show Stock Quotes – WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin lets you add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post with shortcodes.
This plugin includes several customizable features. You can choose to use built-in skins or customize it yourself. It’s easy to customize it so it matches your site. You can also add custom stocks to specific categories.
Customize the appearance by changing height, width, scroll speed, opacity, background color, number of stocks displayed at one time, font family, text color, font size, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator – WordPress Plugin)
This free plugin allows users to calculate indicative repayments online. It’s great for automotive loans, real estate, or other large loans.
(Finance Calculator – Loan Calculator)
The Finance Calculator plugin also contains an application form that sends a notification message to the email address you specify.
It will display 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 For WordPress)
WP-Invoice lets WordPress blog owners send itemized invoices to their clients.
This plugin lets you integrate billing into WordPress. You can send out 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 from clients, create PDF invoices, provide quotes, create checkout forms, and more.
The plugin ties into your WP user management database to keep track of your clients and their information, and integrates with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal Payments Pro, and others.
You can add custom payments and charges, create pre-defined line items and discounts, quickly view invoice status and progression, easily filter and find invoices, show invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification 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 Plugin For WordPress)
This complete business management solution includes accounting management, invoicing, order management, help desk with knowledgebase and support ticket management system, client relationship management and many more features.
(All In One Business Management Application – Invoice)
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)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with customers, tracks your company’s cash flow and net worth, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software – WordPress Plugin – Client Invoicing)
iBilling Accounting and Billing Software integrates with several payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services 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. Below is a list of some of the best accountancy themes available. With the themes below you can own a professional-looking accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro Theme)
This is an inexpensive turn-key theme created for accountants and accounting firms. It’s responsive, has 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, performs auto resizing for images, and a whole lot more.
You can easily expand this theme with premium add-ons.
More information:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This theme has a variety of styles and layouts to make your accounting site look and feel professional.
This responsive theme includes a custom slider, a featured testimonial, it’s lightweight, search engine friendly, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides the flexibility you need without bloating your theme with features you don’t need. Free updates and 1 year of support is included in the cost of purchasing.
Visit this site to learn more this theme:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This premium theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your site any way you want. It also has unlimited sidebars and custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, different color schemes, a custom slider, three different blog types, and is mobile-friendly. It looks clean and modern and loads fast.
More info:
Kathryn
(Kathryn WordPress Theme)
This one is developed specifically for accounting businesses. The theme allows you to use WordPress as a true CMS 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 colors, is easy to use, search optimized, and is responsive (mobile-friendly). Although it can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy slider plugin and is a separate purchase from the Genesis Framework.
Go here for more details:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WordPress Theme)
This one was built to enhance professionalism within the accounting industry. It features authoritative colors and elements designed specifically to make your accounting business website look professional while not 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 form section with consultation requests (downloadable as a CSV file), testimonials, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate Theme)
WP Advocate is a free corporate theme specifically designed for professional service providers such as accountants and attorneys. You can use the bundled images or upload your own. It also includes a custom post type adding staff profiles. It will also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. WP Advocate is a clean and fast-loading theme.
More info:
Divi
(Divi – WordPress Theme)
Divi is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create a unique, professional site using its page builder or beautiful and unique pre-made layouts. You can change your layout to your heart’s content.
The builder transforms web elements into visual building blocks, allowing anyone to understand and redesign the structure of their pages without touching code.
(Divi Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 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. Divi is mobile-friendly and fully customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes full access to over 80 sleek business themes.
More information:
The Corporation
(The Corporation Theme)
The Corporation from Elegant Themes was created specifically to create good-looking corporate websites.
It has a sleek and professional page-based home page design with a nice slider. It also has a blog design and features that toggle on and off. It has six unique color schemes. It also comes with multiple page templates which include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Theme prices start at $69 per year and includes access to all beautifully-designed themes.
Go here for more info:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme For WordPress)
The Adviser Theme was developed to help finance professionals build trust online with a clean business design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services like investment advice or tax advice. Adviser includes a recruitment page with hiring announcements and where to send applications, a built-in lease calculator, multiple shortcodes and widgets, and the drag-and-drop visual composer..
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium theme was built specifically for financial companies, tax and financial advisors, and those offering tax assistance. The theme is designed to show your services in a professional way and help build your professional reputation. It has a range of blog styles, uses a 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 developed for businesses that provide any type of financial service including tax help, consulting, finance, corporate, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. Finance Business 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 a custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page settings, color management features, animations, and lots 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 guide on how to improve your accounting business online using WordPress useful.
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