Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The online economy has not only revolutionized the way business is done globally, it has also created increasingly difficult challenges and opportunities for accountants.

Challenges Accountants Face Online

Today, more than ever, certified public accountants must work hard and find smarter ways to remain competitive, obtain new clients, and keep their current business. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the communities and industries you serve, you must also develop and maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning better ways to market your business online.

In addition to investing dollars in offline marketing activities like advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., you will probably find that in order to remain competitive, you will need to assign a greater part of your marketing budget towards developing and maintaining a website that attracts clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps you create wider marketing reach online.

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

Another problem that CPAs face (as other professions do for that matter), is that your site has only around thirty seconds to help users find what they need or they will look 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 Businesses In The Digital Economy

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available to accounting companies that are willing to evolve to meet digital challenges and who can think outside the box in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn new ways to attract and engage more visitors and establish online credibility for your business.

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

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, go here:

• Discover Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Money And What To Do About It
• WordPress In Business – The Beginner’s Guide To Building A Successful Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Accounting Or Financial Services Site

This section covers ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages your website needs, what content you need, your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, read this detailed guide: The Web Site Planning Process: A Comprehensive Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

How To Improve Your Web Pages

Professional business websites need several basic pages. Let’s go over these.

Services And Products Description Page

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

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

• Business accounting – business planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, bookkeeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, 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, 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 direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.

This page should also list any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above the competition.

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

Your Staff

Are you searching for quicker and simpler ways to sell more products online? Then something you can do, is help your prospective clients get to know you, your team and your organization better.

You want prospects 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 mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be very well-versed in accounting terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your team members on their social pages.

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

(Make sure to add a staff page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add a simple and easily updatable directory of staff members to your site without coding skills here: WordPress Plugin Tutorial: How To Easily Add A Staff List Directory To WordPress

Work For Us

This is a listing of career opportunities available within the firm. It could include training provided, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. It should include stories of graduates who have risen within your organization and information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

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

Case Studies

Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what it’s like to do business with your firm. Adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies also helps your accounting or financial services website to establish social proof.

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

For a detailed article on using client testimonials and client reviews get better results online, go here: How To Create Better Results Online Using Effective User Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is essential.

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

• Business Name
• Physical location
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Email
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media networks
• Live chat (optional feature)

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

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as news and events, company updates, educational articles and tutorials, informative posts, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

You may not have been told about this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that can help begin to drive targeted visitors to your site, simply by adding regular content to your website.

(WordPress can drive new traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more about this: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Increase Your Web Visitors For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Pages

Having a compliant website is really important, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened in whichever area you provide services to.

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

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

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

You want to provide great content with information and tips that will get your visitors sharing your content online and coming back for more. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospects about your business and about doing business with your firm.

For example, for an accounting business, topics can cover:

• How balance sheets work
• Profit and loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients understand accounting services, such as forensic accounting, small business accounting, using office accounting software, reducing debt, understanding financial conventions, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords and terminology in your articles 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 actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, 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 completely FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Experience

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

Add RSS Feeds

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

If you provide valuable information, other businesses will want to syndicate your content.

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

• All of your content updates are in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• It provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view 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 providing information on your site from other sites, 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-related government departments and key industry bodies.

Below we have listed some exaples of feeds containing useful information that 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

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your website’s user experience.)

Add Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. Forms and checklists can provide visitors with step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. They can also be great business planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Unique Tools

Providing useful tools and applications for businesses is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools for accounting websites. Other tools can include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part two of this guide, we will look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your site that can improve seo, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online.

To view Part 2, click this link:

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

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