Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only transformed business around the world, it has also created significant challenges and great opportunities for the accounting profession.

Online Challenges For The Accounting Profession

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever before to remain in business. Not only do you have to become more involved in the communities and industries you serve, you must also maintain an active digital presence. This includes having an effective website and figuring out smarter ways to market your business services online.

As well as spending money marketing offline, businesses in the accounting industry are now finding that they will need to designate a bigger portion of their marketing budget towards developing and maintaining a website that brings in prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and creates wider reach online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your pages have to 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 some aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires having a sound web and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that accounting businesses face with their websites (as do most businesses for that matter), is that your site has only around 30 seconds to provide users what 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 Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to accounting businesses that are willing to evolve to meet digital economy demands and think strategically when it comes to marketing their services better online.

In this detailed guide, you will learn ways to source more business and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your business online, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting business website or blog.

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

• Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• WordPress For Business Owners – An Online Guide To Growing Your Small Business Using A WordPress Blog

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Or Financial Services Site

We’ll start first by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages an accounting site needs, what type of content works best, useful tips for improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting website, visit this page: The Web Site Planning Process Explained: A Practical Blueprint For Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Website Pages

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

Services And Products Page

You need to include a page that lists your services and products.

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

• Business accounting – business planning, company formation, general accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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

List all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and why they should book an appointment with you.

About Us Page

This page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, sponsored community projects, etc.

It’s important to also include any professional awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your company and position it above your competitors.

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

Meet Your Staff

If you are searching for quicker and simpler ways to sell more products online, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for prospective clients to get to know you, your team and your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with accounting terms it 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 visitors to follow some of 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 outline your staff member’s qualifications, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

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

If you need help how to easily create and add a simple and easy-to-update list directory of employees to your web site with no coding skills required, see this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee Directory To Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Career Opportunities

List any career opportunities within the firm. This page could include training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working for your organization, etc. You can include stories of graduates who have worked their way up in your organization and information such as the job outlook and additional 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 this page, join your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials from previous clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what it’s like to do business with your organization. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients, you will also help to establish social proof online.

(Add a page with client reviews and case studies. Image sourced from: pcg-services.com)

We have written a detailed article about using testimonials, case studies and reviews to improve your business results online. For more info, see this article: How To Achieve Better Results Online With Effective Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is essential.

Your contact page should include the following:

• Name
• Your physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Links to social media networks
• Chat feature (optional)

If you operate from multiple locations you will want to make this clear when showing your address and contact info.

You could also include links to an FAQ page, main pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using timely content such as company events, product releases, useful information, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Something not many people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that can help drive targeted visitors to your business, simply by adding regular content to your web site.

(WordPress can generate new visitors automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more about this: Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Attracting More Traffic For Your Business Automatically With WordPress

Legal Information

As a professional accountant, having a compliant website is very important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being broken wherever your business is located.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• 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
• and others

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your website here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Improve The Content On Your Site

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

By committing to providing great content with advice and tips, you will get your visitors sharing your content and coming back for more information. Content marketing is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk prevention
• Tips on structuring your 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 prospective clients understand accounting services, such as forensic accounting, tax accounting, business budgeting, reducing debt, understanding accounting conventions, 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 and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality 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 completely FREE!

Tips For Improving User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

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

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites may want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, 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
• Allows users to subscribe
• It provides links back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are several ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your website 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 by searching online for relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.

Here are some exaples of feeds containing useful information that you may want to 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

(Using RSS feeds can help to improve your site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. Forms and checklists can give them useful instructions and resources to perform tasks. Forms and checklists are also great business planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Other Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools you can add to accounting websites. Others would include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we will look at a number of online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

To continue, click this link:

• The Complete Guide On How To Grow Your Accounting Business Online Successfully – Part Two

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