Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The information economy has not only transformed business worldwide, it has also created increasingly difficult challenges and opportunities for businesses offering accounting services.

Online Challenges For CPAs

Today, more than ever, certified public accountants must work hard to remain competitive, find new clients, and keep their current clients. Not only do they have to become actively involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning smarter ways to promote your business online.

As well as spending money advertising offline on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television spots, etc., businesses in the accounting industry are now finding that they need to invest a greater portion of their marketing budget to develop and maintain a website that attracts prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and helps them gain wider marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, load fast, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and sections may need to be updated frequently. This requires the implementation of a well-planned website and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accountancy firms face with their websites, as do all other businesses for that matter, is that they have only about 30 seconds or less to give users the information they are searching for 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 Certified Public Accountants In The Web Economy

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for accounting companies that are willing to evolve to meet online economy demands and who can think outside the box when it comes to marketing themselves better online.

The article below will help you uncover ways and opportunities to attract and engage new visitors and improve your business results online.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting or financial services website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see these articles:

• How A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Cost You Prospective Buyers And What To Do About It
• Learn How To Grow Your Business With WordPress

Tips To Improve Your Website

This section will show you ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what web pages you need, what type of content works best, navigation structure, etc.

If you need specific help with website planning, read this detailed guide: A Basic Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Web Pages

All business websites need a number of essential pages. Let’s review these.

Services And Products

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

It should include services such as:

• Business – business planning, incorporation of companies, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, 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 a business, 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 what these services do and why they should book an appointment with you.

About Us

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical programs, etc.

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

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

Our Team

Are you searching for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to sell more products online or increase user interaction with your site? Then help prospects get to know your organization better.

You want prospective clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors are probably not 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 so your site visitors can follow your staff members on their social pages.

In this page, don’t be afraid to show the human side of your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your employee’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 team profile page. Screenshot image source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to add an easy-to-update simple team members directory to your web site without coding skills, see this tutorial: How To Create A Simple Employee List For Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Career Opportunities

List any career opportunities available within your firm. This page would include training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include stories of trainees who have worked their way up in your company and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

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

Case Studies And Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients what kind of solutions you can implement to help solve their problems. Adding a web page with reviews from clients and case studies also provides social proof.

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

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online. For more details, go here: Learn How To Improve Your Sales Conversions With Captivating Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A functional contact page is essential.

It should provide visitors with some or all of the following:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Physical location
• Telephone number
• Fax
• Email
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media networks
• Chat (optional)

If your business operates in different locations you will want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact info.

You can also include links to the most commonly asked questions, main pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content like announcements, updates, training articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your company.

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

Something few businesses know about, is that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will help begin to deliver web traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your site)

For more details: Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Driving More Web Traffic For Your Business Automatically With WordPress

Legal Information Pages

It’s important to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened wherever you provide services to.

Depending on the services and products you provide, adding the legal pages below to your accounting or financial services site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

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

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. For more details, go here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips For Improving Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, being generous with content has become one of the key success factors for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

Providing great content with information and tips will get your visitors sharing your content online and coming back for more information. Content marketing 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 or financial services business, topics could include:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning advice
• Business insurance
• Risk protection
• How to structure 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 prospective clients understand your services, such as forensic accounting, small business accounting, business auditing, reducing business debt, understanding accounting concepts, etc.

Remember to use relevant 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 regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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 100% FREE!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving your site’s user experience (generally referred to 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.

Add RSS Feeds

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

If you provide useful content, other businesses will 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 kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides links to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

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

To find useful RSS feeds just search online for finance and tax-related government departments and industry bodies.

Here are examples of RSS feeds you could consider adding 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

(Use RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better UX.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and forms can provide visitors with useful instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. Checklists and forms are great business planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Fundraising Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Adding Online Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools to add to accounting websites. Other applications can include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2 of this detailed guide, we will look at a several online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can help improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this comprehensive guide on ways to build your accounting web presence.

To keep reading, click this link:

• Your Accounting Website – Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins & Themes

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