Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today face growing challenges.

Online Challenges For Certified Public Accountants

Accountants today must work harder than ever before to remain competitive. Not only do they have to become actively involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning better ways to promote your business online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing, you will probably find that in order to remain competitive, you will need to assign a larger part of your budget to developing and managing a website that brings new clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps you gain wider exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, 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 the needs of your website may change in time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires the implementation of a sound website and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that accountants (and most other businesses) face with their websites, is that they have only about thirty seconds or less to give users what they need or they will go elsewhere to find what they need.

“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 Accounting Professionals

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to accounting firms that can adapt to meet the challenges of the digital economy and who can think progressively about improving their online marketing skills.

This comprehensive article will help you uncover ways and opportunities to drive more traffic and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing tips and information on ways to improve your accounting business online, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system to power your accounting business website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, go here:

• Learn How A Poorly Designed Web Site Can Cost You Potential Customers And What To Do About It
• Learning WordPress – A Business Owner’s Guide

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

We’ll start first by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages a financial services website needs, what content works best for accounting websites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, read this guide: A Cost-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require several essential web pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  should have and how to structure your accounting website for best results.

Services And Products

It’s essential to include a page that explains your services or products.

Your page will include services such as:

• Business accounting – business planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, 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. Educate your visitors about what your services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

This page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

It’s important to also include any accounting awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above the competition.

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

Our Team

Are you searching for simple ways to sell more products or services online and get prospective clients to stay longer on your site? Then help prospects get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

Your business needs to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. It 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 even include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow selected staff members on their social networks.

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

(Add an employee description page. Screenshot image source: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-manage simple staff directory in your website without using code here: Adding A Staff Directory In WordPress

Job Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within the organization. It could include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. It should include case studies of recruits who have established a solid career path thanks to your firm and information about career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your announcements list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients them minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with testimonials from past clients and case studies, you are also helping to provide social proof online.

(Add a page to your site with testimonials from previous clients and case studies. Screenshot image sourced from: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively about using case studies, testimonials and reviews to grow your business online here: Discover How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Leads Using Knockout Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

A contact page is essential.

Your contact page should provide the following information:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your address
• Telephone number
• Facsimile
• Email
• Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media profiles
• Online Chat/Skype

If you operate out of different locations you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact info.

Consider also including links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like company news, company updates, useful information, informative posts, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established 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 hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can act as both your website and your blog.

Something few businesses know about, is that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that will begin to attract targeted traffic to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

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

Go here to learn more about this: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Getting More Website Traffic Automatically

Legal Info Pages

It’s crucial for professional companies to have a compliant website, not just for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being breached wherever you service clients.

Adding 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 (e.g. Facebook), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms 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.

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site. To learn more about this go here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips For Improving Your Web Content

In today’s fiercely competitive online economy, being generous with content has become one of the key business differentiators.

By committing to providing great content with useful advice and tips, you will get your visitors to share your content with others and come back for more. Publishing content is a great way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit and loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• Structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your prospective clients understand accounting services, such as finance accounting, tax accounting, business auditing, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use 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 easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content for 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 User Experience

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

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides lots of benefits for your website.

If you provide useful content, 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 content updates are in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared
• Allows users to subscribe
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides multiple ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to providing great 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 many useful RSS feeds by searching online for finance-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

Here are a few useful RSS feeds you could add to your accounting 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

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your accounting site’s user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your readers and set yourself apart from the competition. They can provide useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. Forms and checklists are great business planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Fundraising Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

Providing unique tools and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly 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 part 2, we will look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your site that can improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click on this link to continue:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Traffic With Plugins And Themes

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