Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today face increasing challenges.

Online Challenges For Accountants

Now, more than ever, accountants must work harder to stand out from the crowd, obtain new business, and retain current business. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also develop an active presence online. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your business online.

As well as investing dollars advertising offline, businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be delegated to developing and maintaining a website that can drive clients, engage users, outrank 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 professional, your pages have to load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of the website will change in time and some areas may need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing well-planned web and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accounting businesses face online, and most other professions for that matter, is that you have an average of 30 seconds to give visitors what they are looking for or they will go away.

“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 Accountants

As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available to accounting businesses that can evolve to meet digital challenges and can think outside the box about marketing their business services better online.

This guide will help you uncover ways to attract more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your accounting website.

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

Useful Tips To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Site

Let’s start by going over some basics. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages your website needs, what type of content works best, ways to improve layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed guide we have written here: A Basic Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Basic Website Pages

All business websites require several basic web pages. Let’s go over the pages your need and how to set up your accounting or financial services website for best results.

Description Of Services

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

Your page should include services such as:

Business – planning, incorporation of companies, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting, 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 businesses, transfers, etc.
Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical programs, etc.

Remember to mention any business awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above the competition.

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

Staff Page

If you are searching for quicker and easier ways to grow your business online and get people to stay longer on your site, then help your visitors get to know, like and trust your business better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. 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. It should also include social buttons so your visitors can follow individual staff members on their social pages.

On this page, don’t be afraid to show the human side of your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight each employee’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 members to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to add an easy-to-update list of staff members in your site using free plugins, go here: Adding An Employee Directory To Your Site: Step-By-Step Tutorial

Work For Us

This is a listing of career opportunities within the firm. This page should include type of training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working with your firm, etc. You can also include case studies of graduates who have worked their way up in your firm and information such as the job outlook and upcoming 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 the page, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Case studies and testimonials from past clients are a great way to show potential clients what it’s like to do business with your organization. Adding a web page with reviews from clients and case studies also helps your accounting or financial services business to provide social proof online.

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

For a detailed article on using client case studies and client reviews to grow your business online, go here: Achieve Better Results Online Using Engaging Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

It should include the following information about your business:

Name Of Your Organization
Physical address
Telephone
Fax
Email
Google Map
Website address
Contact form
Contact name
Social media web addresses
Chat/Skype

If you have different areas you want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

You could also include a few links for commonly-asked questions, useful pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services 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 promote your business by publishing timely content such as news and events, company updates, useful articles, informative posts, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an accounting or financial services site, 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 add new content to or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your website and blog.

Something few businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that will help begin delivering an ongoing stream of web traffic to your business, simply by publishing new content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can drive new visitors automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more about this: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Driving More Website Visitors Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Information Pages

It’s really important to make sure they have a compliant website, not just for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being contravened wherever you provide services to.

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

Contact Page
Privacy Policy
Terms Of Use
Website Disclaimer
Affiliate Agreement
Anti-Spam Policy
Compensation Disclosure
DMCA Notice
Earnings Disclaimer
External Linking Policy
Health/Financial Disclaimers
Refund Policy
Video/Audio Terms
etc.

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Ways To Improve Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the earlier you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

You want to provide great content with information and tips that will get your visitors sharing your web pages online and coming back for more. Publishing content is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about doing business with your company.

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

Explanations of balance sheets
Overlooked tax deductions
Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
Cashflow planning tips
Maximizing business insurance cover
Protecting revenues
How to structure your self-managed retirement fund
Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your prospective clients understand your accounting or financial services, such as forensic accounting, tax accounting, business budgeting, reducing debt, understanding financial conventions, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords in your content that your 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 actionable information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your 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 User Experience

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

Adding RSS Feeds

Using RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in many 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 syndicating your content to other sites using RSS feeds, include:

All of your updates are kept in one place
Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
Feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
Users can subscribe to your feed
A feed provides links to your site
Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits 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.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content for your website by searching online for finance-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed some exaples of useful RSS feeds 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

(Add RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Adding Online Checklists

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and forms can provide visitors with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete tasks. Forms and checklists are also great business planning tools.

Forms and checklists can include subjects such as:

How To Set Up A Company
Negative Gearing Checklist
Not-For-Profit Activity Checklist
Disclosure Checklists
Partnership 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) on your website is a great way to 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 would include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

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

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

To view Part Two, click this link:

Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes That Can Help Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group

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Tag: Accounting Business