Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress
Accounting professionals today face increasing challenges.
Online Challenges For CPAs
Accounting businesses today must work harder than ever before to remain in business. Not only do they have to participate in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having a website and learning better ways to grow your business online.
As well as spending money advertising offline, businesses in the accounting industry are now finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be assigned to developing and maintaining a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps create wider marketing exposure online.
This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change over time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires having a well-planned web and content management strategy.
Another problem that accountants face with their websites (as all other professions do for that matter), is that you have only around 30 seconds to give users what they need or they will find what they are looking for elsewhere.
“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
Online Opportunities For CPAs
As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that are willing to adapt to meet digital economy demands and who can think progressively about marketing their services better online.
In this guide, you will discover a number of ways to attract and engage more visitors and establish online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.
As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your accounting website, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your accounting website.
For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:
- Learn Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Business
- An Online Guide To Building A Successful Business With A WordPress Site
Practical Tips To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website
We’ll start first by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your accounting website and get better results. We will look at what pages an accounting website needs, what content works best, your navigation structure, etc.
If you need help with website planning, go here: A Basic Guide To Website Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners
Improve Your Website Pages
All websites require some essential pages. Let’s take a look at these.
Products And Services
You need to include a page that explains your products and services.
It should include all the products and services you offer, such as:
- Business accounting – business planning, company formation, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
- Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advice, 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 businesses, asset transfers, etc.
- Lending and leasing
List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and direct them to your appointment booking page.
About Us
The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical programs, etc.
Remember to include any industry awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above your competitors.
(List all of your industry awards certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc. in the About Us page. Image source: deloitte.com)
Your Staff Page
If you are looking for quicker and simpler ideas to sell more products online and get people to engage more on your site, then make it easier for visitors to get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.
Potential clients need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be very well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. It should even include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow selected staff members on their social networks.
On this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.
(Add a team profile page. Screenshot source: deepsky.com)
If you need help how to easily create and add a list directory of staff members to WordPress using free WordPress plugins, go here: Step-By-Step Tutorial: How To Easily Add A Staff List Directory
We’re Hiring
List any career opportunities within the firm. It would include training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include information about additional 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 the page, join your contact list, follow your social pages, etc.
Case Studies And Testimonials
Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show potential clients them minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a web page with case studies and client reviews also provides social proof.
(Add a page to your site with testimonials from previous clients and case studies. Screenshot image sourced from: pcg-services.com)
We have written extensively about using client testimonials and client reviews improve your business online. Go here to learn more about this: How To Improve Your Conversions Using Powerful Testimonials
Contact Us
Having a functional contact page is absolutely necessary.
Your contact page should include some or all of the following information:
- Company Name
- Physical location
- Phone
- Facsimile
- Map
- Web URL
- Contact form
- Name of person to contact
- Social media web addresses
- Interactive chat
If your business operates in multiple areas you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact info.
Consider also including links to commonly-asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add An Accounting Blog
A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content such as industry news, product updates, educational information, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, media presentations, etc.
If you already have an established accounting website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your organization.
If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting or financial services site is very hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act both as your website and business blog.
Not many people know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can help begin attracting a stream of new targeted traffic to your business, simply by publishing regular content to your website.
(WordPress can generate new visitors automatically to your site)
Go here to learn more about this: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine
Legal Info Pages
It’s extremely important to have a compliant website, not just for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not contravening local, regional or federal laws and regulations in whatever area or location you service.
Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:
- Contact Page
- Privacy Policy
- Terms And Conditions
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Health Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- etc.
We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. For more details: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site
Improving The Content On Your Website
In today’s globally competitive economy, the earlier you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Providing great content with useful advice and tips will get your readers sharing your content with others online and coming back for more information. Content marketing is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services and products.
For example, topics for an accounting or financial services business can include:
- How balance sheets work
- Understanding profit & loss statements
- Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
- How to present accounts for non-profit activities
- Business cashflow planning
- Business insurance
- Protecting revenues
- How to structure your self-managed retirement fund
- Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing insurance, setting up payroll systems, etc.)
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of your services, such as software accounting, tax accounting, using office accounting software, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.
Remember to include the same keywords and terms in your content that prospective clients would search for online.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful 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!
Improve Visitor Experience
Improving your site’s user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and user experience.
Add RSS Feeds
RSS feeds provide many benefits for your website.
If you provide valuable information, other sites may want to syndicate your content.
Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:
- All of your content updates are kept in one place
- Doesn’t rely on email
- Can be shared
- Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
- An RSS feed provides links back to your content
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
- There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your website from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.
You can find many useful RSS feeds by searching online for finance-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.
Below we have listed some useful RSS feeds you could add to your site:
- 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
(RSS feeds can help to improve your site’s UX.)
Checklists And Forms
Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. They can provide useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform tasks. Checklists and forms can also be great planning tools.
You can provide online or downloadable checklists and forms (or links to these) covering a range of areas such as:
- How To Set Up A Business
- Rental Property Worksheet
- Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
- Disclosure Checklists
- Sole Trader Tax Checklist
- Trust Tax Checklist
- Income Tax Variation Forms
Other Tools
Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools you can add to accounting websites. Other tools would include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.
In part two of this detailed article, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your accounting site using WordPress plugins that can improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.
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This is the end of part one of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business web presence.
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