Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital information age has not only revolutionised business around the world, it has also created growing challenges and great opportunities for certified public accountants.

Challenges Accountants Face Online

Accounting businesses today must work harder than ever to remain in business. Not only do you have to become actively involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having a website and searching for smarter ways to promote your business online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing activities such as advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that they will need to invest a more significant share of their marketing budget towards the development and management of a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and increases their presence online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to be fast-loading, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website may change in time and many aspects will need to be updated often. This requires implementing well-planned website and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accounting organizations face online (as all other professions do for that matter), is that they have only around thirty seconds to give users what they are searching for or they will leave your site.

“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 Services

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to accounting companies that are willing to adapt to meet the challenges of the digital economy and who can think strategically about improving their online business marketing skills.

This detailed guide will help you uncover opportunities to source more business and create significant improvements in your business online.

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

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

• Discover How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Customers
• An Online Guide To Growing Your Successful Business With WordPress

How To Improve Your Website

This section will show you ways to improve your accounting website and get better results. We show you what pages an accounting site needs, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services sites, useful tips for improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, visit this page: A Practical Guide To Website Planning For Business Owners

Essential Pages

Professional websites need a number of basic pages. Let’s go over these.

Services Page

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

Your page will include all the services you offer, such as:

• Business – business planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, 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 the benefits of using your services 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, philanthropy, etc.

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

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

Staff

If you are searching for quicker and easier ways to grow your business online and increase user interaction on your site, then make it easier for prospects to get to know, like and trust 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 members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be that well-versed in accounting terms it 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 so your site visitors can follow selected team members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight your team member’s expertise and qualifications, how they add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a ‘meet the team’ page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to easily create and add a simple and easy-to-update simple team directory to your web site without coding skills, go here: How To Add A Staff List Directory

Work With Us

This is a listing of career opportunities available within the company. This page should include type of training provided, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You can include case studies of trainees who have risen within your organization and information about upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain 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 announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials & Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients what type of solutions you will implement to help them solve problems. Adding a web page with reviews from clients and case studies also provides potential clients with social proof.

(Add a page with testimonials and case studies. Image source: pcg-services.com)

To learn more about using case studies, testimonials and reviews, refer to this article: Learn How To Improve Your Sales Using Standout Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is essential.

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

• Company Name
• Address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Links to social media profiles
• Live Chat/Skype (optional feature)

If your business services several areas you should make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like news, updates, training articles and tutorials, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will help begin to attract targeted visitors to your site, simply by publishing new content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can generate traffic automatically to your site)

For more details, go here: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Grow Your Web Visitors For Your Business

Legal Info Pages

It’s vital for accounting and financial services firms to ensure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws and regulations are being broken wherever your do business in.

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

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, being generous with content that educates and informs readers has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.

By committing to providing great content with useful information and tips, you will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more information. Content marketing is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospects about your business and about doing business with your firm.

For example, topics for an accounting business can include:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk prevention
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

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

Remember to include the same keywords and terminology in your articles that readers would search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach 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 marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

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

If you provide valuable content, other sites 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
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• A feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your website 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 relevant government departments and respected industry bodies.

Here are a few feeds you may want to add 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

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your site’s UX.)

Adding Online Forms And Checklists

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and forms can provide useful instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. Forms and checklists are also great business planning tools.

Forms and checklists can include subjects such as:

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

Other Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are some of the most popular tools for accounting websites. Others can include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part two of this guide, we take a look at a number of online tools you can add to your accounting or financial services website using WordPress plugins that can improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click here to access the rest of this guide:

• Online Business Tips For Certified Public Accountants – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation

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