Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital business age has not only revolutionised business worldwide, it has also created difficult challenges and great opportunities for certified public accountants.

Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession

Today, more than ever, CPAs must find smarter ways to stand out from the competition, source new clients, and retain current business. Not only do you have to become more involved in the communities and industries you serve, you must also develop a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning smarter ways to grow your business services online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing, businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be assigned to develop and maintain a website that brings new prospects, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and increases their marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change in time and many areas may need to be updated often. This requires the implementation of a sound web and content management strategy.

One other problem that accountancy firms (and most businesses) face online, is that your site has an average of thirty seconds to give visitors the information they are looking for or they will 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 Professional Accountants

As well as facing many new challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to accounting firms that can adapt to meet the demands of the digital economy and who can think progressively when it comes to marketing their services better online.

In this detailed guide, you will learn about opportunities to drive more web traffic and improve your accounting and financial business presence online.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting or financial services business website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see these articles:

• Discover How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Lose You Prospective Customers And What To Do About It
• Mastering WordPress – The Business Owner’s Guide

How To Improve Your Accounting Website

Let’s start by going over the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what web pages you need, what content works best, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, see this detailed step-by-step guide: A Comprehensive Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require a number of essential web pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  need and how to set up your accounting website for best results.

Description Of Services

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

It should include services such as:

• Business – business planning, company formation, general accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, 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 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 your services and why they should choose you.

About Us Page

This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

It’s important to include any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote the company and position it above other competitors.

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

Your Team

Are you looking for simple ways to sell more products online? Then make it easier for prospects to get to know 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 team. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with 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 also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow your team members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline your team member’s expertise, 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)

If you need help how to easily add an easy-to-manage list directory of employees or team members to WordPress without coding skills, go here: Adding A Staff Directory

Work With Us

This is a listing of career opportunities within your organization. This page can include training provided, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities sponsored or encouraged by your firm, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the accounting 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, join your contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients businesses minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a web page with testimonials from past clients and case studies also helps to provide social proof.

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

To learn more about using testimonials, case studies and user reviews, see this article: All You Need To Know To Get Better Results Online With Powerful Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should include the following information:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your address
• Phone
• Fax number
• Email address
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media web addresses
• Chat

If you operate from several locations you should make that clear when displaying the address and contact information.

Consider also including links to commonly-asked questions, useful pages, special offers, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like company news, product updates, useful articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established website, 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 or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can serve both as your website and your blog.

Something not many businesses know about, is that WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that will begin driving targeted traffic to your business, simply by publishing new content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Driving More Traffic Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Info Pages

As a professional accountant, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is really important, not just for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching laws and regulations wherever your do business in.

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

To learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Website

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

Providing great content with advice and tips will get your readers to share your content and come back for more information. This is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about doing business with your organization.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk prevention
• Structuring 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 readers gain a better understanding of your accounting services, such as software accounting, small business accounting, business auditing, reducing business debt, understanding accounting concepts, etc.

Remember to include keywords and terms in your content that your 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 easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improve Visitor Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide plenty of benefits for your website.

If you provide valuable information, other sites may 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
• Your feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides links back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing 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 loads of useful content for your website by searching online for relevant government departments or well-known industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of useful RSS feeds you could add to your 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 improve your site’s UX.)

Add Online Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your visitors and provide something unique. Forms and checklists can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. Checklists and forms can also be great planning tools.

Forms and checklists could include areas such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Unique Tools

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

In the next section of this detailed article, we will look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can use in your accounting or financial services site that improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of section 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence.

To keep reading, click this link:

• Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins And Themes

Subscribe To WPCompendium.org And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!

***

***

***