Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today face increasing challenges created by the digital economy.

Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain in business. Not only do you have to be fully involved in the communities and industries you serve, you must also develop a strong web presence. This includes having a dynamic web presence and searching for better ways to grow your business online.

As well as investing dollars in offline marketing activities, businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be assigned towards the development and maintenance of a website that brings in prospective clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to give them a wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change over time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires the implementation of a sound website and content management strategy.

Another challenge that CPAs face online, as most other professions do for that matter, is that your site has an average of 30 seconds or less to help visitors find what they need 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

Online Opportunities For Certified Public Accountants

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also many online opportunities available for accounting companies that are willing to evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and who can think progressively in terms of marketing their business services better online.

In this guide, you will learn ways to attract and engage new visitors and establish online credibility for your 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 business website.

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

• Learn Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Business
• How To Grow Your Business With A WordPress Blog

Practical Tips To Improve Your Website

This section looks at ways to improve your accounting website and get better results. We will look at what pages a financial services site needs, what type of content you need, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, visit this page: How To Plan A Website - A Practical Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Web Pages

All business websites require several essential pages. Let’s go over these.

Products And Services

It’s essential to have a page that lists your services and products.

This page will include all the services you offer, such as:

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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about what these services do and why they should choose you.

About Us

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

It should include any professional awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your company and position it above the competition.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are searching for simple ideas to sell more products online and increase user interaction with your site, then something you can do, is help your visitors get to know your organization better.

You want your business to be relatable. A 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 bio. Since most visitors won’t 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 team members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to highlight each person’s qualifications, how their skills and knowledge add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

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

To learn more about how to easily create and add an easy-to-update list of employees to your WordPress site using a free plugin, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities available within the company. This page could include training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities sponsored by your organization, etc. It should include stories of trainees who have established a solid career path thanks to your organization and information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the accounting and financial services 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 your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients the benefits of doing business with your organization. By adding a page with testimonials from past clients and case studies, you will also help to establish social proof online.

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

We have written a comprehensive article on using testimonials, case studies and client reviews to improve your business results online. Go here to learn more: Achieve Better Results Online Using Awesome Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

A contact page is crucial.

It should include the following:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Physical address
• Telephone
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Request for information – who to contact
• Social media URLs
• Chat feature

If your business operates in multiple locations you will want to make that clear when showing your address and contact info.

You could also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Blog

A blog can be a powerful business marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as news, company updates, useful articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an existing accounting or financial services website, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your organization.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting or financial services site is very hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your website and blog.

Not many people know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic machine that will help begin delivering a stream of web traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

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

For more info, see this article: Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your WordPress Website Into A Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information Pages

Having a compliant website is vitally important, not just for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking laws and regulations wherever your business is located.

Adding the legal pages below to your accounting website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

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

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

Tips For Improving Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, being generous with content has become one of the key success factors for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

You will want to provide great content with useful information and tips that will get your visitors sharing your web pages online with others and coming back for more. This is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services and products.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure 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 educational articles that will help your your readers understand your accounting services, such as forensic accounting, business accounting, office accounting software, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords and terminology in your articles that your prospective clients 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 that will teach you 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 100% FREE!

Improve Visitor Experience

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

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

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

If you provide information that adds value to others, other sites 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
• Your feed can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes 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 loads of useful content by visiting sites of relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are some exaples 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

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

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your audience. Checklists and forms can provide useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete a task. Forms and checklists are also great business planning tools.

You can provide online or downloadable checklists and forms (or links to these) covering a range of areas such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Company Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools you can add to accounting websites. Other applications could include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part two of this detailed guide, we will look at a number of online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins and themes that improve seo, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this article on ways to improve your accounting business online.

To keep reading, click this link:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation Using WordPress Plugins And Themes

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