Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today are facing an ever growing number of new challenges brought about by the digital economy.

Challenges CPAs Face Online

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain in business. Not only do they have to participate in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop an active web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better market your business services online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing activities, you will probably find that in order to compete, you will need to designate a greater share of your marketing budget towards developing and maintaining a website that will bring in prospective clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and help you gain a wider amount of 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 it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change over time and many areas will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a well-developed web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that accountancy firms (and other professions) face online, is that they have an average of 30 seconds or less to help visitors find what they are searching for or they will go elsewhere to find what they need.

“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 The Accounting Profession In The Digital Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting profession that can evolve to meet online challenges and think strategically when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.

In this detailed guide, you will learn about ways to attract more potential clients and create significant improvements in your business presence online.

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

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), go here:

• How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Cost You Business And What To Do About It
• An Online Guide To Growing Your Business Using A WordPress Blog

Tips To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

We’ll start first by covering some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your accounting website and get better results online. We show you what web pages you need, what content you need, suggestions for improving your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Web Pages

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

Products And Services

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

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

• Business – planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, 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, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should choose you.

Who We Are

This page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

It’s important to also mention any business awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote the company and set it above other competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are looking for inexpensive ideas to sell more products or services online and get people to stay longer on your site, then something you can do, is help prospects get to know you, your team and your business better.

Your business needs to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with accounting terms your 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 prospective clients to follow individual staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your person’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add an employee description page. Screenshot source: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to add an easy-to-update list of staff or team members to your web site without editing code here: How To Add A Simple Employee Directory To Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

We’re Hiring

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your organization. This page should include training offered, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working with your organization, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the accounting industry.

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

Case Studies

Client reviews and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what it’s like to do business with your company. Adding a web page with testimonials and case studies also helps your accounting or financial services website to provide social proof online.

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

To learn more about using testimonials and user reviews, see this article: How To Improve Your Sales Using More Effective User Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is essential.

It should provide visitors with some or all of the following information about your firm:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Address
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Online chat

If your business operates in several areas you should make this clear when showing your address and contact info.

You can also include links to an FAQ section, useful pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content like industry news, updates, training articles, opinions and discussions, videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an accounting site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your firm.

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

Very few people know that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that can instantly drive targeted visitors to your web site, simply by adding new content to your website on a regular basis.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

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

Legal Information

It’s essential to make sure they have a compliant website, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being broken in whatever area you service.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting site will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential sources of threats and legal 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/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website here: Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s fiercely competitive online economy, being generous with content has become one of the key differentiators for businesses.

You want to provide great content with information and tips that will get your readers to share your web pages and come back for more. Using content is a great way to educate your visitors and prospects about your business and about doing business with your company.

For example, topics for an accounting business could include:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a 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 educational articles that will help your your readers understand your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing business debt, understanding accounting conventions, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords in your content that readers would search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Syndicating Content - RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your website.

If you provide useful content, 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 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 RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides links to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides multiple ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

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

You can find many useful RSS feeds for your website by visiting sites of tax-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

Here are a few RSS feeds you could 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

(Use RSS feeds to improve your accounting site’s UX.)

Provide Online Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Checklists and forms can give them useful instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. They can also be great planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

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

In part two, we will be discussing a number of WordPress plugins you can add to your site that can improve seo, increase user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of part 1 of this guide on ways to grow your accounting business web presence.

To continue reading, click here:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins That Can Help To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Web Traffic

Would You Like To Get Automatically Notified When New Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe Using The Form Below!

***

***

***