Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants face many new challenges in today’s digital economy, especially in terms of growing a business presence online.

Challenges CPAs Face Online

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become more involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having a dynamic web presence and searching for smarter ways to grow your business services online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing activities such as advertising on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be assigned to develop and maintain a website that drives clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase your marketing reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your web pages have to load fast, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change in time and many aspects may need to be updated frequently. This requires having a well-planned website and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that accounting businesses face online, and other businesses for that matter, is that your site has an average of thirty seconds or less to help visitors find the information they need 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 Accountants In The Online Economy

As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for accounting companies that are willing to evolve to meet digital economy demands and can think progressively about improving their online marketing skills.

This detailed guide will help you uncover opportunities to increase web traffic and create significant improvements in your business results online.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your accounting website, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform to power your accounting website or blog.

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

• Discover How A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Prospective Clients And What To Do About It
• WordPress – A Small Business Owner’s Guide

Ways To Improve Your Website

Let’s start by going over some basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services websites, ways of improving layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, visit this page: How To Plan Your Website - A Money-Saving Blueprint For Business Owners

Improve Your Web Pages

Professional websites need a number of essential pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  need and how to set up your website for best results.

Services And Products Description Page

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

This page should include services such as:

• Business accounting – business planning, company structures, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, 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 businesses, 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 the benefits of using your services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, supported community programs, etc.

Remember to also mention any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your company and position it above other competitors.

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

Team Profile

Are you searching for ways to sell more products online and get visitors to stay longer on your site? Then one of the things you can do, is help your prospects get to know your organization better.

You want people to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a brief 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. 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 some of your team members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight each employee’s expertise and qualifications, how their skills add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

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

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-manage simple team members directory to your website without coding skills here: WordPress Plugin Tutorial: Adding An Employee List Directory To Your Site

Recruitment

List any career opportunities within the organization. It would include training offered, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include stories of trainees who have worked their way up in your organization and information about 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 the page, join your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to show potential clients businesses minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials, you will also help to provide visitors social proof online.

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

To learn more about using client case studies and user reviews, see this article: How To Improve Your Sales With Meaningful Testimonials

Contact Page

A functional contact page is crucial.

It should include some or all of the following information about your firm:

• Name
• Your physical location
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Email
• Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media profiles
• Live chat

If your business operates in multiple areas you want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.

Consider also including links to the most commonly asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using content like company events, updates, educational information, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Not many people know this, but WordPress can become an automated traffic-generation machine that will deliver targeted traffic to your website, simply by publishing new content on a consistent basis to your website.

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

Go here to learn more about this: Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your Website Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information

It’s very important for professional businesses to have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being contravened in whichever region you do business in.

Adding the legal pages below to your website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

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

Go here to learn more about adding legal pages to your site: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s ultra competitive digital economy, content marketing has become one of the key success differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

By committing to providing great content with useful advice and tips, you will get your readers sharing your content and coming back for more. Publishing content is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your products and services.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Understanding profit and loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your accounting services, such as software accounting, tax accounting, tips on using small business accounting software, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use keywords in your content that prospective clients will be searching 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 show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site 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 Experience

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

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in many ways.

If you provide valuable content, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing valuable 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 RSS feeds with useful content for your website by visiting sites of finance and tax-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed a few RSS 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

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

Adding Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and forms can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. They can also be great planning tools.

Checklists and forms can address areas such as:

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

Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools for accounting websites. Other applications could include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your accounting or financial services website using WordPress plugins and themes that can help improve seo, increase user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click on this link to view Part 2:

• How To Build And Grow Your Accounting Or Financial Services Business Online Using WordPress – Part 2

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