Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today face increasing challenges.

Online Challenges For Certified Public Accountants

Today, more than ever, accountancy firms must work hard to remain competitive, find new clients, and keep their current clientele. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop and maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better promote your services online.

As well as investing dollars marketing offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other web-marketing savvy accounting businesses, you will need to invest a bigger share of your marketing budget towards developing and managing a website that brings new prospects, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps you create wider marketing exposure online.

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

One other challenge that accounting firms face (as most other businesses do for that matter), is that they have an average of 30 seconds to give visitors the information they are searching for or they will look 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

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting profession that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and think outside the box when it comes to marketing their business better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will discover ways to attract and engage 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 to power your accounting or financial services website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress platform, see these articles:

• Learn How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Business
• Using WordPress To Grow Your Business

Useful Tips For Improving Your Accounting Site

We’ll start first by going over the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages an accounting website needs, what content you need, useful tips for improving layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, see this detailed step-by-step guide: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Basic Website Pages

All websites require several basic web pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  need to have and how to structure your accounting website for best results.

Products And Services Page

You need to include a page that explains your services and any products that you offer.

This page will include services such as:

• Business – planning, formation, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, budgeting, financing, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, 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 a business, asset 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 Page

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

This page should mention any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote the company and position it above other competitors.

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

Core Team

Are you searching for simple ways to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is help prospective clients get to know you, your team and your business better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. It should include a photo and a mini 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 also include social buttons so your visitors can follow some of your staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your person’s expertise, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a staff page. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

We have created a detailed tutorial about how to easily create and add an easy-to-manage simple employee directory to your website using a free WordPress plugin here: Step-By-Step Tutorial: Adding An Employee Directory In WordPress

We’re Hiring

List any career opportunities available within the company. This page would include training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can also include case studies of graduates who have established a solid career path thanks to your firm and information about additional career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Also include 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 you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what kind of accounting solutions you are capable of implementing to help them solve problems. Adding a web page with case studies and reviews from clients also helps your accounting or financial services business to provide visitors social proof online.

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

We have created a comprehensive article about using client case studies and reviews to improve your business results online. To learn more about this go here: How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Lead Conversions Using More Effective Client Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should include the following:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your physical location
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Google Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for information – contact details
• Social media links
• Chat feature

If your business operates from multiple areas you will want to make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

You can 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

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like company news, updates, useful information, informative posts, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established accounting or financial services website, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your firm.

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

Something few businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that can instantly attract targeted traffic to your site, simply by adding new content on a regular basis to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive new traffic automatically to your website)

For more details, go here: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your Website Into An Automated Web Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

Having a compliant website is extremely important, not just for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws and regulations are being broken wherever you provide services to.

Adding the legal pages below to your site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Ways To Improve Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the faster you will begin to differentiate yourself from competing businesses.

Providing great content with useful advice and tips will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more information. This is the most effective way to inform and educate site visitors and prospects about your business and about using your products and services.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• Tips on structuring a 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 informative articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of accounting services, such as forensic accounting, business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords and terms in your articles that your readers would search 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 website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your 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 Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving your user experience (often referred to as UX) helps 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.

Syndicate Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in a number of different ways.

If you provide content 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 content updates are in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to providing valuable content on your site 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 loads of useful content by searching online for finance-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

Here are a few 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

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your accounting website’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

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

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Company Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Unique Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications for businesses is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your target audience. 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 will be discussing a number of online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section 1.

To view the rest of this guide, click this link:

• A Practical Guide To Growing Your Accounting Or Financial Services Web Presence Successfully – Part Two

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