In Part 1 of this guide on ways to build your accounting business online, we provided in-depth information on the following areas:
- Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession
- Opportunities For The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy
- Essential Web Pages
- Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website
In this section, we explore more ways to grow your accounting services business online. Topics covered below include:
- Improving Traffic Using WordPress
- Tips For Generating New Leads & Enquiries
- WordPress Plugins That Can Help Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Visitors
For more information about WordPress plugins and themes, go here:
- WP Plugins – Extending Your Blog’s Capabilities
- WP For Newbies – An Introduction To WordPress Themes
How To Improve Traffic
Your web traffic is an important part of your business growth. This section will help you improve your web traffic.
Optimizing Your Site For Search Engines (SEO)
There are lots of ways WordPress can help to improve SEO:
- SEO-Friendly – WordPress lets you set the permalinks to use the title of the posts as the URL of your pages.
- Tags – WordPress lets you choose the keywords that you want search engines to index your article pages (posts) for.
- Post Categories – Create search engine-friendly categories for your posts and products.
- Post Excerpts – Set the description for your posts that search engines will show.
- Images – add search-optimized titles to your content images for improved search results.
- Internal Content Linking – WordPress has a built-in feature that lets you easily link your content to other posts on your site
- Pinging – Configure your site to automatically notify other sites and directories immediately upon publishing a new post on your website.
How To Improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins
In addition to the built-in features of WordPress, the WP developer community makes available various plugins that will improve SEO, increase engagement and drive more web traffic to your site.
Here are some plugins you can use to improve your SEO:
- All in One SEO – WordPress SEO plugin
- Google XML Sitemaps – WordPress sitemap plugin
- Page-List – WordPress site map plugin (for visitors)
(Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO)
Other WordPress tools you can use to improve your website’s SEO, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your site are to add a forum, newsletters, commenting, and social features. Here are some more plugins that can help (many of the plugins described below are also free):
- BuddyPress – This free WordPress plugin allows you to run a social community on your WordPress website.
- bbPress – Use bbPress to set up and run your own online community forum on your website.
- E-Newsletter – E-Newsletter lets you send email newsletters, track results and manage subscribers from your WordPress dashboard.
- Disqus – use this plugin to power discussions and increases user engagement on your site.
- Social Media Feather – Easily add powerful social sharing features to your posts and pages.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
Tips For Generating More Leads & Enquiries
This section explains ways to improve your sales and generate leads and enquiries for your business.
Add A Newsletter
Adding a newsletter is a great way to build a list of subscribers. Adding newsletters] provides a number of benefits and advantages, like:
- Sends targeted traffic to your website
- Keeps your business at the forefront of your reader’s minds
- Provides updates that could save businesses time and money
- Provides you with a targeted marketing channel
- It’s a way to offer special products or services to a select audience
- Increases engaging with users
- Provides you with additional opportunities for readers to share your content
One of the things you can do to get visitors to subscribe to your newsletter is to provide high value information and give users free gifts in exchange for their personal details. This can be a guide, tips for handling finances, access to financial calculators, coupons, membership access to subscriber-only content, contests, etc.
Contact Forms
Contact forms make it easy and simple for readers to get in touch with you. Visitors can raise problems, contact specific departments, request a quote, give suggestions and more.
A contact form provides a number of benefits including:
- Reducing spam
- Automated response
- Giving you control over what is 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
- Convenient for users
A very popular contact form plugin for WordPress is Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7
(Contact Form 7 WordPress Plugin)
This free contact form plugin allows you to insert multiple contact forms into any post or page, customize the form and the email contents, add fields, and more.
The plugin supports international languages, Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, spam filtering and so on.
Something else to consider is adding sections to your contact form so prospects can select which topic they want to discuss. This helps you get the comment to the right person.
Map
Adding maps helps your visitors and customers find you.
Adding maps, such as Google Maps to your WordPress site also provides many benefits, such as:
- A map increases local SEO
- Helps visitors find you 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
Improving SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using Plugins & Themes
WordPress Plugins For Accounting Services
WordPress makes available a number of plugins you can add to your accounting site to immediately add a range of practical tools for your site visitors. Here are some of these plugins:
Calculator Pro Calculators
(Calculator Pro Calculators WP Plugin)
This is a free collection of 400+ calculators. You can embed these into your posts, pages, or sidebars using shortcodes. The plugin also supports internationalization
Note: Most of the calculators aren’t focused specifically on accounting, but there are a few you can use for:
- Interest rate
- Payments
- Tax
- Debit
- And many more
For more details, go here}:
Show Stock Quotes
(Show Stock Quotes Plugin For WordPress)
This plugin installs a widget that shows a number of different stock quotes per portfolio. You can show as many widgets as you want.
(Show Stock Quotes WordPress Plugin – Stock Portfolio)
For more details, go here}:
Custom Stock Ticker
(Custom Stock Ticker Plugin For WordPress)
With this plugin you can add custom stock tickers to any sidebar, page or post using shortcodes.
Custom Stock ticker provides several customizable features. Choose from built-in skins or customize these 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 colours, size, symbols, etc.
For more details, go here}:
Finance Calculator
(Finance Calculator Plugin For WordPress)
This free plugin allows your visitors to calculate indicative repayments online. This is a great financial tool for vehicle loans, property, or any other large loan.
(Finance Calculator WP Plugin – Loan Calculators)
The plugin also contains an application form that will send a notification message to the email address you specify.
Other features of this plugin include displaying 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 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 plugin functionality with both free and premium add-ons, like business location, electronic signature, PDF creation, quoting, 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, and several others.
The plugin gives you the ability to add custom payments and charges, add pre-defined line items and discounts, view invoice status and progression, filter and find invoices, see invoice receipts and invoice history, create email notification templates, view reports (collected vs uncollected invoices, ten 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 knowledgebase and ticketing management system, CRM and lots more.
(All In One Business Management Application – WordPress Plugin – Invoice)
All In One Business Management Application supports multiple 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 Plugin)
This is a scalable business software that lets you manage and communicate with clients, track your company’s net worth and cash flow, send single-click payment reminders and payment confirmations, and lots more.
(iBilling – Accounting and Billing Software WP Plugin – Invoice)
It integrates with several online payment gateways.
For more details, go here}:
Accounting And Financial Services Themes For WordPress
To get the best features and professional look for your website, it’s best to choose a theme specifically suited for accounting businesses. Here is a look at some of the best accountancy themes available. These themes allow you to own a professional accounting website within minutes.
Accounting Pro
(Accounting Pro – WordPress Theme)
This is a turn-key theme developed for accountants and accountancy firms. It’s responsive, has a drag-and-drop page-builder, has 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.
Accounting Pro can be customized with premium add-ons.
For more details about using this theme, go here:
Accountancy
(Accountancy Theme For WordPress)
This premium theme for WordPress 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 section, it’s lightweight, search engine optimized, and loads fast. Accountancy Theme provides the features your business needs without bloating your theme. Your purchase includes free updates and 1 year of support.
For more details, go here:
Accounting
(Accounting – WordPress Theme)
This theme includes a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to design your website any way you want. The theme also provides unlimited sidebars with custom widgets, four different header types, a custom administration panel, four color schemes, a custom slider, 3 blog types, and is fully responsive. It looks clean and modern and is fast to load.
To learn more about this WordPress theme, go here:
Kathryn
(Kathryn)
This premium WordPress theme was designed specifically for accounting businesses. It comes with multiple layouts, slider, multiple sidebars, widgetized home page, flexible rotator, call to action boxes, author boxes for single or multiple bloggers, various color options, is easy to use, search engine friendly, and is mobile-friendly. Although this theme can easily fit any profession you like, it builds a great looking accounting theme. It includes a license for the Soliloquy responsive slider plugin and must be purchased separately from the Genesis Framework.
More information:
Accounting WordPress Theme
(Accounting WordPress Theme – WP Theme)
This theme was designed to exude professionalism within the accounting industry. Every color, layout element, icon, menu item, page structure, call-to-action, etc., was designed specifically to help make your accounting business site 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 accounting services, contact details section with consultation requests (downloadable as CSV), testimonials, and a blog.
For more details, go here:
WP Advocate
(WP Advocate – WordPress Theme)
This 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 for staff profiles and can also integrate with BeSpoke profile templates. It’s clean and fast-loading.
More info:
Divi
(Divi)
This premium theme for WordPress is the most flexible theme in Elegant Themes‘ collection. You can create any kind of professional website you want 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 anyone to understand and easily redesign the structure of their web pages without touching code.
(Divi WordPress Theme – Flexible Page Builder)
It comes with 40 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere you want. It has accordion, blurb, circle counter, divider, image, map, portfolio, shop, tabs, toggle, fullwidth code, fullwidth map, fullwidth post title, and more.. Divi is mobile-friendly and completely customizable. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.
Go here for more info:
The Corporation
(The Corporation WP Theme)
This one was designed specifically to make corporate sites look great.
This theme has a page-based home page design with a nice slider, blog design, six unique unique color schemes, multiple page templates that include contact pages, blog feeds, sitemaps, search page, gallery page, and more. Themes start at $69 per year and includes access to 80+ themes.
Go here for more details:
Adviser
(Adviser Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was designed to help finance industry professionals build trust online through clean design. It’s perfect for businesses that provide services such as investing 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 widgets and multiple shortcodes, and includes the drag-and-drop visual composer.
More information:
Tax Help
(Tax Help Theme)
This premium theme for WordPress was specifically designed for financial organizations, tax and financial advisors, and businesses that offer tax services. It’s designed to showcase your services professionally to help build your professional reputation. It comes with different blog styles, uses the drag-and-drop visual composer, includes a shortcode builder, the Revolution Slider, and additional custom shortcodes.
Go here for more details about using this WordPress theme:
Finance Business
(Finance Business)
Finance Business Theme was built for businesses that provide financial services including tax help, consulting, corporate, finance, insurance, loans, accounting, and more. This theme includes a custom CMSMasters Visual Content Composer plugin, around one hundred shortcodes that includes charts and financial content, the custom drag-and-drop composer, 2 premium sliders, page options, color management, animations, and lots more.
Visit the theme website to learn more about using this 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
We hope that you have found this guide on ways of improving your accounting or financial services website using WordPress helpful.
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