Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The information economy has not only transformed business around the world, it has also created a growing number of challenges and opportunities for certified public accountants.

Challenges Accounting Firms Face Online

Now, more than ever, certified public accountants must work hard to stand out from the crowd, source new business, and keep their current business. Not only do they have to actively participate in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having a website and learning smarter ways to market your business services online.

In addition to investing dollars advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated towards the development and maintenance of a website that drives clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and gives your business wider reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website may change over time and some aspects will need to be updated often. This requires implementing well-planned website and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that accountancy firms face online, as other businesses do for that matter, is that your site has only around thirty seconds to help visitors find what they need or they will go away.

“Websites have evolved into central information hubs where service information is still present but enhanced with web portals, hyperlinks to state and federal sites, and a variety of free tools.”

Michael Alter, http://www.accountingweb.com/technology/accounting-software/tips-for-improving-your-website

Opportunities For Accounting Businesses In The Web Economy

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that can adapt to meet online challenges and think progressively when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

In this article, you will learn about opportunities to increase web traffic and create significant improvements in your business presence online.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, go here:

• How A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress

Ways To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

In this section we will start with the basics and show you ways to improve your accounting website and get better results online. We show you what pages an accounting website needs, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services websites, navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed step-by-step guide we have written here: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

All websites need some basic pages. Let’s discuss these.

Services Description Page

You need a page that lists your services or products.

Your page should include services such as:

• Business – planning, incorporation of companies, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate accounting
• Wealth creation
• Superannuation/retirement plan (401k) advice
• Audit risk assessment and assurance
• Quickbooks – setup, training, tune up, and support
• Specialist services – mergers, acquisitions, information technology, secretarial, rentals, trusts, fiduciary accounting, succession planning, selling a business, asset transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and why they should book an appointment with you.

Who We Are

This page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

It should mention any business awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote the company and set it above your competitors.

(List all of your awards certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc. in the About Us page. Screenshot image source: deloitte.com)

Staff Page

Are you looking for quicker, simpler and cost-effective ideas to sell more products online and get people to engage more on your site? Then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your visitors to get to know, like and trust your business better.

You want potential clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in accounting terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow individual staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to highlight each person’s qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a team profile page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to create and add an easy-to-manage directory of employees or team members to your website using free WP plugins, go here: How To Create A Simple Staff Directory For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Recruitment

List any career opportunities available within your organization. It could include training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities sponsored or encouraged by your firm, etc. You should also include case studies of graduates who have worked their way up in your organization and information about upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, join your contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to show potential clients businesses minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you are also helping to provide social proof.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and client reviews. Image sourced from: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and user reviews to improve your business results online here: Achieve Better Results Online Using Effective Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A functional contact page is absolutely necessary.

It should provide:

• Business Name
• Address
• Telephone number
• Facsimile number
• Email
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Live chat feature (optional)

If you operate in several areas you should make this clear when showing the address and contact information.

Consider also including links to the most commonly asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like industry events, updates, educational articles, informative posts, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your organization.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing site is very hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your business website and blog.

Something few people know about, is that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that can help begin attracting a stream of new visitors to your web site, simply by adding content to your website on a regular basis.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive traffic automatically to your website)

To learn more about this go here: Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Automatically Increase Your Traffic For Your Business

Legal Pages

As a professional business, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucial, not just for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching local, regional or federal laws or regulations in whichever location you provide services to.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial/Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. For more details: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving Your Web Content

In today’s highly competitive online economy, the earlier you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from competing businesses.

You want to provide great content with advice and tips that will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services.

For example, for an accounting business, topics can cover the following:

• How balance sheets work
• Profit and loss statements
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers understand accounting services, such as software accounting, business accounting, using office accounting software, reducing business debt, understanding financial concepts, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords and terms in your content that your prospective clients would search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your site visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improving User Experience

Improving user experience (typically referred to as UX) will help you keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and user experience.

Use RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in many ways.

If you provide valuable information, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your updates are in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides multiple ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to providing information on your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

You can find RSS feeds with loads of useful content by searching online for tax-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

For example, here are some RSS feeds you could add to your website:

• Taxation Policy Center: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/press/rss.cfm
• Australian Taxation Office: https://www.ato.gov.au/RSS-news-feeds.aspx
• Canada Revenue Agency: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/rssfeeds/
• UK HM Revenue and Customs: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rss/rss.htm
• South Africa Revenue Service: http://www.sars.gov.za/Pages/RSS-Feeds.aspx

(Using RSS feeds can help to improve your accounting website’s UX.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can provide useful instructions and resources to perform tasks. Checklists and forms can also be great business planning tools.

You can provide online or downloadable checklists and forms covering a range of topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Checklist
• Non-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

Providing unique tools and applications for businesses is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are popular tools for accounting websites. Others can include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we will look at a number of WordPress plugins you can use in your accounting website that can help to improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click here to keep reading:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic

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