Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today are facing increasing challenges brought about by the web economy.

Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online

Certified Public Accountants today must work harder than ever before to remain in business. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the communities and industries you serve, you must also develop and maintain an active presence online. This includes having a dynamic web presence and searching for smarter ways to market your business services online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing activities like advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv spots, etc., you will probably find that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be assigned towards the development and management of a website that drives new prospective clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps increase your reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website may change in time and some areas may need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accountancy firms face (and all other professions for that matter), is that your site has an average of 30 seconds to give users 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

Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting sector that are willing to evolve to meet online economy challenges and can think outside the box about improving their online marketing skills.

In this guide, you will discover opportunities to drive more web traffic and create significant improvements in your business online.

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

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

• Discover How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Potential Customers And What To Do About It
• WordPress For Small Business – An Online Guide To Building A Successful Business With A WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Site

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

If you need specific help with website planning, see this detailed guide: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Pages

Professional websites need several basic web pages. Let’s review these.

Products And Services Page

You need to include a page that explains your products or services.

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

• Business – business planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, 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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using your services and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us

This page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, community activities, etc.

Remember to also list any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote the company and set it above the competition.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are searching for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online, then help prospective clients get to know you and your organization better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. 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 biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow individual team members on their social pages.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each person’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to 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. Image source: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to create and add an updatable simple team directory in WordPress with no coding skills required here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List For Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within your firm. This page could include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include case studies of graduates who have worked their way up in your firm and information such as the job outlook and new 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, subscribe to your updates list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a page with testimonials and case studies also provides potential clients with social proof.

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

If you want to learn more using client case studies and reviews to grow your business online, go here: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online With Effective User Testimonials

Contact Page

A contact page is crucial.

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

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your physical location
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media pages
• Live chat feature (optional feature)

If you operate from different areas you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business using content like company news, company updates, training articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Very few people know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will help attract web traffic to your site, simply by adding regular content to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

For more info, see this article: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Generate More Website Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Pages

As a professional business, having a compliant website is vital, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being breached wherever you service clients.

Depending on the services and products you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your site will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms 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

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. For more details: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, engaging in the practice of content marketing has become one of the key success factors for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

By committing to providing great content with advice and tips, you will get your visitors sharing your web pages and coming back for more. Using content is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services and products.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Profit and loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning
• Business insurance
• Risk protection
• Tips on structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

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

Remember to use relevant keywords and terms in your content that prospective clients will be searching for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Improve Visitor Experience

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

Add RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide plenty of benefits for your site.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites will 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
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• It provides a way for links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• There are several ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes 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 many useful RSS feeds for your website by visiting sites of finance and tax-related government departments and key industry bodies.

Here are a few RSS feeds containing useful information that you may want to consider adding 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

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

Provide Downloadable Checklists

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. Checklists and forms can provide step-by-step instructions and resources to perform tasks. Forms and checklists are also great business planning tools.

You can provide checklists and forms covering a range of areas such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Sole Trader Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

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

In the next section, we take a look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can use in your accounting or financial services website that can help improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this guide on ways to improve your accounting business presence online.

To continue reading, click here:

• The Ultimate Guide To Building And Growing An Accounting Online Presence – Part 2

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