Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today face a number of challenges.

Online Challenges For Certified Public Accountants

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever before to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your services online.

As well as investing dollars marketing offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, you will need to designate a more significant part of your budget towards the development and management of a website that brings new prospective clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps increase your marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change over time and some aspects will need to be updated frequently. This requires a sound web and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accounting firms (and other businesses) face with their websites, is that you have around 30 seconds or less to provide users with what 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 Accountants

As well as facing many challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and think outside the box about marketing their business better online.

This article will help you uncover new opportunities to find new potential clients and create significant improvements in your business online.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system to power your accounting website.

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

Practical Tips For Improving Your Website

Let’s start by covering the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services websites, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, check out the detailed guide we have written here: The Web Site Planning Process Explained - A Cost-Saving Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

All websites need several essential pages. Let’s review these.

Products And Services Page

It’s essential to include a page that explains your products and services.

This page will include all the services and products you offer, such as:

Business – business planning, formation, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, forecasting, budgeting, financing, 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 a business, asset transfers, etc.
Lending and leasing

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what your services do and why they should choose you.

About Us Page

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

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

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

Meet Your Staff

If you are looking for quicker and easier ways to grow your business online and get people to stay longer on your site, then make it easier for prospective clients to get to know you and your organization better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be that well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow some of your staff members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each team member’s experience, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to easily create and add an updatable simple team members directory to your web site without editing code, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

We’re Hiring

List any career opportunities available within your company. It can include training, employee benefits, professional development, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your firm, etc. You can include stories of trainees who have risen within your firm and information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Include also a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, subscribe to your updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Client reviews and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients the benefits of doing business with your firm. Adding a page with client reviews and case studies also helps to provide potential clients with social proof online.

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

We have written extensively about using client testimonials and client reviews improve your business online. If you are interested in learning more here: Learn How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects With Powerful Testimonials

Contact Page

A clean contact page is essential.

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

Company Name
Physical location
Telephone
Fax
Contact email address
Google Map and directions
Web address
Contact form
Name of person to contact
Links to social media networks
Chat feature (optional)

If you operate from different areas you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact info.

You should also include links to the most commonly asked questions, useful pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Blog

A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content such as announcements, company updates, educational articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your services.

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

Very few people know that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that can drive new visitors to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

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

To learn more about this go here: Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your WordPress Blog Into A Web Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is vitally important, not just for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not contravening laws and regulations wherever your business is located.

Depending on the products and services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your site will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

Contact Page
Privacy Policy
Terms Of Use
Website Disclaimer
Affiliate Agreement
Anti-Spam Policy
Compensation Disclosure
DMCA Notice
Earnings Disclaimer
External Links Policy
Financial Disclaimers
Refund Policy
Video/Audio Terms
etc.

Go here for a detailed article on adding legal pages to your website: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

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

You want to provide great content with advice and tips that will get your visitors to share your web pages with others and come back for more. Content marketing is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

Explanations of balance sheets
Overlooked tax deductions
Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
How to present accounts for fundraising activities
Cashflow planning tips
Maximizing business insurance cover
Risk prevention
Tips on 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 readers gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, tax accounting, business budgeting, reducing business debt, understanding accounting conventions, etc.

Remember to include the same keywords 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 exactly how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to your 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!

Improve Visitor Experience

Improving your website’s user experience (often referred to as UX) will help keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and user experience.

Use RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in a number of different ways.

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

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other websites using RSS feeds, include:

All of your updates are in one place
Doesn’t rely on email
Your feed can be shared online
Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
A feed provides links back to your site
Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
RSS provides multiple ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
It’s built into WordPress

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

You can find RSS feeds with useful content by visiting sites of relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

For example, here are a few RSS feeds you could consider adding to your accounting 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

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

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. Forms and checklists can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. Forms and checklists can also be great planning tools.

Checklists and forms could address subjects such as:

How To Set Up A Business
Negative Gearing Checklist
Fundraising Governance Checklist
Disclosure Checklists
Company Tax Checklist
Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
Income Tax Variation Forms

Adding Unique Tools

Providing useful tools and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are popular tools for accounting websites. Other tools would include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2, we take a look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your website that improve your seo, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

To continue reading, click this link:

How To Successfully Grow Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website – Part 2

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