Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants face a number of challenges in the digital economy, especially when it comes to growing a successful presence online.

Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession

CPAs today must work harder than ever to remain in business. Not only do they have to become actively involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop an active presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and searching for smarter ways to grow your business services online.

In addition to investing money marketing offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, you will need to delegate a more significant amount of your budget towards the development and management of a website that drives clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps give your business wider exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and some areas may need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing well-planned website and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that accounting businesses face, as do other professions for that matter, is that you have an average of 30 seconds to help users find what they need or they will go elsewhere to get their needs met.

“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 Accountants In The Web Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting profession that are willing to evolve to meet digital challenges and who can think outside the box in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

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

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your accounting business online, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting website.

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

• Why A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Money And What To Do About It
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

This section looks at ways to improve your accounting website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what content works best, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed step-by-step guide we have written here: How To Plan Your Business Web Site: A Comprehensive Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional websites require several basic pages. Let’s discuss these.

Your Products And Services

You need a page that lists your products or services.

It will include services such as:

• Business – business planning, company formation, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, forecasting, budgeting, financing, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, planning, reviewing, auditing, advice, 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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about what these services do and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us

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

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

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

Staff

Are you searching for cost-effective ways to sell more products online and get people to engage more on your site? Then one of the things you can do, is help prospects get to know your organization 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 brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be 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 even include social buttons so your site visitors can follow individual team members on their social pages.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline your team member’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add an employee page. Image source: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to create and add an easy-to-update directory of employees or team members in WordPress using a free plugin here: How To Create A Simple Employee Directory In Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

We’re Hiring

This is a listing of career opportunities within the organization. This page should include training, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include case studies of graduates who have established a solid career path thanks to your company and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Also include a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, join your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients them minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a web page with reviews from clients and case studies also helps to establish social proof.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials. Image source: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively about using client case studies and user reviews to grow your business online. Go here to learn more: Learn How To Improve Your Conversions Using Captivating Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is crucial.

It should provide some or all of the following information about your company:

• Name
• Your physical address
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Email
• Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Interactive chat (optional feature)

If your business operates out of several areas you will want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

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

Add An Accounting Blog

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content such as news and events, product updates, training articles and tutorials, opinions on current topics, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Something few people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that can instantly begin delivering targeted traffic to your business, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

For more info, see this article: Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Increasing Your Traffic Automatically

Legal Info Pages

It’s important for professional organizations to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws and regulations are being contravened wherever you provide services to.

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

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

Go here if you would like to learn more about adding legal pages to your site: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Ways To Improve The Content On Your Site

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

By committing to providing great content with information and tips, you will get your visitors sharing your content with others online and coming back for more information. Publishing content is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

For example, topics for an accounting business could include:

• How balance sheets work
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning advice
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, etc.)

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

Remember to use relevant keywords and terms in your content that prospective clients would search for online.

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

Ways Of Improving User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed provides plenty of benefits for your business.

If you provide valuable content, other sites may 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
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of 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.

To find useful RSS feeds just search online for finance-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are a few useful RSS feeds you could 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 site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

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

Forms and checklists can include topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Checklist
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Sole Trader Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

Providing useful tools and applications for businesses 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 you can add to accounting websites. Other applications would include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we take a look at a number of online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins that can improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click on this link to keep reading:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Traffic

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