Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today face growing challenges.

Challenges Certified Public Accountants Face Online

Accountants today must work harder than ever before to remain in business. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also maintain an active digital presence. This includes having a dynamic website and figuring out smarter ways to market your business online.

As well as spending money advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, you will need to assign a more significant part of your marketing budget to develop and manage a website that attracts new clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps to increase your reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website may change in time and many aspects will need to be updated often. This requires having a well-planned web and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that CPAs (and other professions) face with their websites, is that your site has only about 30 seconds to give users the information they are looking for or they will go 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

Opportunities For Accounting Services

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to accounting firms that can adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and can think strategically in terms of marketing themselves better online.

This detailed guide will help you uncover ways and opportunities to increase traffic and create significant improvements in your business online.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your website, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your accounting or financial services business website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Money
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Small Business With WordPress

Useful Tips To Improve Your Website

We’ll start first by covering the 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 your website needs, what type of content works best, ways to improve your site’s navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, read this article: The Website Planning Process: A Cost-Saving Blueprint For Business Owners

Basic Web Pages

Professional websites require some essential pages. Let’s review these.

Description Of services And Products

It’s essential to have a page that lists your services and any products that you offer.

This page should include services such as:

• Business accounting – planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, budgeting, financing, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advice, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate finance
• 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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and why they should book an appointment with you.

About Us

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

It’s important to mention any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote the company and position it above your competitors.

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

Team

If you are searching for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for visitors to get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t 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. This page should even include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow selected staff members on their social networks.

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

(Add a staff description page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily create and add an easy-to-update simple employee directory in your web site using free plugins, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Plugin Tutorial: How To Add A Staff List Directory

Work With Us

List any career opportunities within your organization. It should include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, social activities promoted by your firm, etc. It should include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Maintain a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to show prospective clients the benefits of doing business with your company. By adding a page with testimonials and case studies, you will also help to are also establishing social proof.

(Add a page with case studies and reviews from clients. Image sourced from: pcg-services.com)

We have created a comprehensive article on using client testimonials and reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more about this: Create Better Results Online Using Knockout User Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

It should provide some or all of the following information:

• Name
• Physical address
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for information – who to contact
• Social media links
• Live chat feature

If your business services several locations you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

You could also include links to an FAQ page, main pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content like news, updates, training articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an accounting or financial services website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your firm.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing site is very hard to keep updated with new content or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can serve as both your website and your blog.

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that can begin delivering a stream of new visitors to your website, simply by publishing content to your website on a regular basis.

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

Go here to learn more about this: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into An Automated Web Traffic Machine

Legal Information

It’s very important to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being contravened wherever your do business in.

Adding 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 legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

Go here if you want to learn more adding legal pages to your website: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s highly competitive global economy, the sooner you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Providing great content with useful advice and tips will get your readers sharing your web pages online with others and coming back for more. Publishing content is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

For example, topics for an accounting or financial services business can cover:

• How balance sheets work
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk protection
• Tips on structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your services, such as finance accounting, business accounting, business budgeting, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to include the same keywords and terms in your content that your readers will be searching 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 useful content for your site visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improving Visitor Experience

Improving user experience (known as UX) helps keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and user experience.

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

An RSS feed provides many benefits for your accounting business.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your content updates are in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides links back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is 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.

To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content just visit sites of finance and tax-related government departments or key industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few useful RSS feeds you may want to 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 accounting website’s user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and forms can provide visitors with step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a necessary task. Forms and checklists are great planning tools.

You can provide forms and checklists (or links to these) covering a range of areas such as:

• How To Set Up A Business
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Company Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Adding Other Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are some of the most popular tools for accounting websites. Other applications could include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2 of this guide, we will look at a several WordPress plugins you can use in your accounting website that can improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

Click here to continue reading:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins And Themes

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