Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals face a number of challenges in the online economy, especially in terms of growing a successful business presence online.

Challenges CPAs Face Online

Now, more than ever, certified public accountants must find smarter ways to stand out from the competition, source new business, and keep their current clients. Not only do you have to participate in the communities and industries you serve, you must also maintain an active digital presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your services online.

In addition to investing dollars marketing offline, businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be assigned to develop and manage a website that will bring new prospective clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help increase their marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and some aspects may need to be updated often. This requires a sound website and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accounting organizations face with their websites (as do all other professions for that matter), is that you have only around 30 seconds to help visitors find the information they are searching for or they will leave and 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 Accountants

As well as facing many challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting profession that are willing to evolve to meet online challenges and who can think outside the box about marketing their business services better online.

In this detailed guide, you will discover a number of ways to attract more potential clients and improve your accounting and financial business presence online.

As well as providing practical tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your website, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress platform to power your accounting or financial services business website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system, see these articles:

Useful Tips To Improve Your Accounting Site

This section will show you how 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 sites, ways of improving your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting website, check out the article we have written here: The Web Site Planning Process: A Comprehensive Primer For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional websites require some basic web pages. Let’s review these.

Products And Services

You need a page that describes your services and products.

It will include services such as:

Business accounting – planning, incorporation of companies, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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, asset transfers, etc.
Lending and leasing

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

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, supported community activities, etc.

It should include any CPA awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote the company and position it above the competition.

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

Team Profile Page

If you are looking for quicker and easier ways to sell more products or services online, then something you can do, is help visitors get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

You want potential clients to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in accounting terms your 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 your team members on their social networks.

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 expertise and qualifications, how they contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your team members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to easily add an updatable simple team members directory to your site here: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff Directory On Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Career Opportunities

List any career opportunities within your company. This page would include type of training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your firm, etc. You can include case studies of graduates who have risen within your firm and information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Also include 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 newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what type of accounting solutions you will implement to help them solve their problems. Adding a web page with case studies and reviews from clients also provides prospective clients with social proof.

(Add a web page with testimonials from previous clients and case studies. Screenshot image source: pcg-services.com)

To learn more about using client testimonials and client reviews to improve your business results online, go here: All You Need To Know To Achieve Better Results Online Using Highly Effective Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide visitors with some or all of the following:

Name Of Your Organization
Address
Phone
Fax
Contact email address
Map
Website URL
Contact form
Contact name
Links to social media profiles
Online Chat/Skype (optional)

If you operate in several locations you want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

Consider also including a few links for commonly-asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content like industry news, updates, educational information, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that will help deliver web traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

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

Learn more about this here: Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Get More Website Traffic For Your Business With WordPress

Legal Information Pages

It’s important to make sure they have a compliant website, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional or federal laws and regulations wherever your business is located.

Adding the legal pages below to your accounting or financial services site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

Contact Page
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 detailed article on adding legal pages to your website. Learn more here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s fiercely competitive online economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Providing great content with information and tips will get your readers to share your web pages online with others and come back for more. Using content is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

How balance sheets work
Understanding profit & loss statements
Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
Presenting accounts for non-profit 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 prospective clients gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, tax accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use keywords and terminology in your content that your prospective clients would search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, 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 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide lots of benefits for your site.

If you provide useful information, other sites will want to syndicate your content.

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
RSS feeds can be shared online
RSS feeds allow users to subscribe
An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
There are multiple ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits 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 search online for finance-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of RSS feeds you may want to add to your accounting 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.)

Adding Downloadable Forms And Checklists

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and forms can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to complete a task. Checklists and forms can also be great planning tools.

Forms and checklists can cover topics such as:

How To Set Up A Company
Rental Property Checklist
Not-For-Profit Activity Checklist
Disclosure Requirements
Individual Tax Checklist
Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

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

In part two, we will look at a number of online tools you can add to your accounting site using WordPress plugins and themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this step-by-step article on ways to grow your accounting business online.

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Grow Your Accounting Website – Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins

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Author: WP Compendium