Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals face a number of challenges in the web economy, especially in terms of growing a successful business presence online.

Online Challenges For Accountants

Today, more than ever, accountants must work harder to stand out from the competition, obtain new business, and retain current clients. Not only do you have to participate in the communities and industries you serve, you must also develop a strong presence online. This includes having a dynamic web presence and learning better ways to grow your business online.

In addition to investing dollars advertising offline, businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that they will need to invest a bigger portion of their marketing budget to develop and maintain a website that brings new prospective clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps give them wider exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of the website may change in time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires implementing well-planned website and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that accounting organizations (and most other businesses) face online, is that your site has around 30 seconds or less to give visitors what 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 Accountants

As well as facing many challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting profession that can adapt to meet digital economy demands and can think progressively about marketing their business better online.

The guide below will help you uncover new opportunities to drive more web traffic and build more online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.

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

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, go here:

• Discover Why A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• The Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Website

In this section we will start with the basics and show you ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what content you need, tips for improving layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Cost-Saving Guide To Website Planning For Business Owners

Improve Your Web Pages

Professional business websites need a number of essential web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Services And Products

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

Your page will include all the products and services you offer, such as:

• Business – business planning, company formation, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, budgeting, financing, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, 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, asset transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

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 your services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

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

It’s important to also mention any industry awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above other competitors.

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

Your Staff Page

If you are looking for cost-effective ways to sell more products online or get people to stay longer on your site, then something you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know you and your business better.

People need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors are probably not that 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. It should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow individual team members on their social networks.

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

(Add a team profile page. Image source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to add an easy-to-maintain simple team members directory in your site using a free WordPress plugin, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee List On Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Work For Us

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your company. It should include training provided, employee benefits, professional development, social aspects of working for your firm, etc. You should also include stories of trainees who have worked their way up in your firm and information about upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Also include a positions available section in your 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 what kind of accounting solutions you can implement to help them solve their problems. Adding a web page with case studies and testimonials also helps to provide prospective clients with social proof online.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials and reviews to improve your business results online. Learn more here: All You Need To Know To Get Better Results Online Using Meaningful User Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following information about your organization:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Address
• Phone number
• Fax number
• Contact email
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media networks
• Online chat

If your business operates from different areas you should make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

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

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful business marketing tool. Most blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business using content like news, product updates, useful information, opinions and discussions, videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Something few people know about, is that WordPress can turn into an automated traffic-generation system that will help attract a stream of web traffic to your business, simply by adding new content on a regular basis to your website.

(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more: WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Increase Your Web Traffic For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Information

Having a compliant website is very important, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking local, regional or federal laws and regulations 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 detailed article about adding legal pages to your site. To learn more about this go here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s highly competitive online economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

By committing to providing great content with useful advice and tips, you will get your readers sharing your content and coming back for more. Using content is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk protection
• Structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers understand your accounting services, such as software accounting, small business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to include keywords and terms in your content that readers will be searching for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful content that will add value to 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 100% FREE!

Improving Visitor Experience

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

Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide lots of benefits for your website.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other sites may want to syndicate your content.

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 and picked up by other sites online
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• An RSS feed provides links to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides multiple ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. view the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing content on 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 for your website by searching online for finance-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could consider adding to your site:

• 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 (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Provide Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase user engagement, add value to your readers and provide something unique. Forms and checklists can give them useful instructions and resources to complete tasks. Forms and checklists are also great planning tools.

Checklists and forms can include topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Unique Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) can help 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 can include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part two, we look at a several online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins that improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this comprehensive guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence.

Click here to access the rest of this article:

• A Practical Step-By-Step Guide On How To Grow An Accounting Or Financial Services Website Using WordPress – Part 2

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