Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals face many new challenges in today’s digital economy, especially when it comes to growing their business presence online.

Online Challenges For Certified Public Accountants

Now, more than ever, certified public accountants must find smarter ways to stand out from the crowd, find new business, and keep their current business. Not only do you have to actively participate in the communities and industries you serve, you must also develop a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better promote your business services online.

In addition to investing money advertising offline, businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be assigned to develop and manage a website that brings new leads, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and gives their business a wider reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website will change in time and many areas may need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing sound website and content management strategy.

One other problem that accounting firms face online (as do most businesses for that matter), is that you have an average of 30 seconds or less 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

Opportunities For Certified Public Accountants In The Web Economy

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for accounting companies that can evolve to meet the challenges of the digital economy and can think progressively when it comes to marketing their business services better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn new ways to find new potential clients and build more online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress CMS platform to power your accounting business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), go here:

• Discover Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Prospective Customers And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Small Business Online Using WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

We’ll start first by going over some basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages a financial services website needs, what type of content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, read this detailed guide: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Website Pages

All websites require several essential pages. Let’s review these.

Services Description Page

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

Your page will include services such as:

• Business accounting – business planning, formation, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, bookkeeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, 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 businesses, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and why they should book an appointment.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, community projects, etc.

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

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

Team

Are you searching for simple ways to sell more products online? Then help your prospective clients get to know your business better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be very well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow individual staff members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your employee’s qualifications, how their skills 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 employees or team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

We have created a detailed tutorial on how to easily add a simple and easily updatable simple team directory to your site using free plugins here: How To Add A Simple Employee List To Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Career Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within your organization. This page could include training, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. It should include case studies of trainees who have worked their way up in your firm and information about 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 the page, join your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Case studies and testimonials from previous clients are a great way to show potential clients what type of solutions you are capable of implementing to help them solve their problems. By adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients, you will also help to provide social proof.

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

To learn more about using case studies, testimonials and client reviews get better results online, go here: Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions With Effective User Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is essential.

It should provide the following information:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media web addresses
• Online chat (optional feature)

If your business services multiple areas you will want to make that clear when showing the address and contact information.

You can also include links to the most commonly asked questions, main pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using content such as company events, company updates, useful information, opinions on current topics, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Not many businesses know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that can help begin driving targeted visitors to your web site, simply by publishing new content to your website on a consistent basis.

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

To learn more about this go here: Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Drive More Web Traffic For Your Business

Legal Pages

It’s vitally important for accounting companies to have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being broken wherever you provide services to.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below 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 threats and legal inconveniences:

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

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Improving Your Web Content

In today’s highly competitive digital economy, being generous with content has become one of the key differentiators for businesses selling similar products or services.

You will want to provide great content with advice and tips that will get your readers to share your content online and come back for more. Content marketing is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospects about your business and about doing business with you.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure your self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers understand your services, such as forensic accounting, tax accounting, business auditing, reducing debt, understanding financial concepts, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords and terminology in your articles that your readers would search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content for your site 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 completely FREE!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in many ways.

If you provide useful information, other businesses may 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
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared online
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website, visit sites of finance-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of 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 feeds can help to improve your accounting website’s UX.)

Provide Online Checklists

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and provide something unique. They can provide visitors with step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks completed. Checklists and forms are great planning tools.

Checklists and forms can include topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Adding Other Tools

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

In part 2, we will look at a number of online tools you can add to your accounting site using WordPress plugins that can help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click here to continue:

• Tips For Certified Public Accountants – Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Visitors Using WordPress Plugins & Themes

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