Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals face a number of challenges in today’s online economy, especially in terms of growing their business online.

Online Challenges For Accountants

CPAs today must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the communities and industries you serve, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a dynamic web presence and learning better ways to promote your business online.

As well as spending money in offline marketing activities, businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be directed to developing and maintaining a website that will bring new clients, engage visitors, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help create wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website may change over time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires a sound web and content management strategy in place.

Another challenge that accounting businesses face online (and all other businesses for that matter), is that your site has only about thirty seconds to help visitors find what they are searching for or they will find what they are looking for 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 Certified Public Accountants In The Web Economy

As well as facing significant business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to accounting businesses that can adapt to meet online challenges and who can think progressively about improving their online marketing skills.

In this detailed guide, you will discover new ways to attract new 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 recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting business website or blog.

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

• Learn Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• Using WordPress To Grow A Successful Business

Practical Tips For Improving Your Website

We’ll start first by reviewing the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages your website needs, what content works best for accounting websites, ways of improving layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, read this detailed guide we have written: A Money-Saving Guide To Website Planning For Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

All websites need a number of essential web pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  need to have and how to set up your accounting or financial services website for best results.

Your Services

You need a page that explains your services and products.

Your page will include services such as:

• Business – planning, company formation, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advice, 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, asset transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what your services do and why they should book an appointment.

About Us

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

Remember to also include any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your company and set it above the competition.

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

Staff Page

If you are looking for quicker and simpler ideas to grow your business online, then something you can do, is make it easier for prospects to get to know your organization better.

Your business needs to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be 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. It should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow your staff members on their social networks.

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

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to create and add an easy-to-update simple staff directory in a WordPress site using free plugins here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Career Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities within the company. This page would include training, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities sponsored by your organization, etc. You can also include case studies of graduates who have risen within your company and information about additional career opportunities in the accounting 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, join your contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and client reviews are a great way to show potential clients what kind of solutions you can implement to help them solve problems. By adding a page with testimonials and case studies, you are also helping to are also providing social proof.

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

We have written extensively about using case studies, testimonials and client reviews get better results online. If you would like to know more here: How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions Using Knockout Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A functional contact page is crucial.

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

• Name Of Your Organization
• Address
• Phone number
• Fax
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Online chat (optional feature)

If your business operates out of multiple locations you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact information.

Consider also including links to the most commonly asked questions, main pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog can be a powerful business marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like company announcements, product updates, educational articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, webinars, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting website is very hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your business website and business blog.

You may not know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic system that can help attract targeted traffic to your website, simply by publishing content to your website on a consistent basis.

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

Go here to learn more: Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Automatically Grow Your Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Information Pages

Having a compliant website is essential, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being breached wherever your business services clients.

Depending on the services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your accounting or financial services site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential sources of 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
• Financial/Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more about this: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s ultra competitive online economy, being generous with content that educates and informs visitors 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 readers to share your web pages and come back for more. This is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about doing business with your organization.

For example, for an accounting or financial services business, topics can include:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning tips
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• 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 readers understand your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, tax accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords in your content that readers 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 that will show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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 100% FREE!

Improve Visitor Experience

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

Adding RSS Feeds

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

If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your updates are in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides a number of ways for readers to 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 providing valuable content on your website from other websites, 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 respected industry bodies.

Here are examples of feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding 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

(Adding RSS feeds can help to improve your website’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to help increase user engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and forms can provide visitors with step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. Checklists and forms can also be great business planning tools.

Forms and checklists can cover areas such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Checklist
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

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

In the next section, we look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can add to your accounting website that improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to grow your accounting web presence.

To continue, click here:

• How To Successfully Grow An Accounting Or Financial Services Online Presence – Part Two

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