Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today face an ever growing number of challenges thanks to the online economy.

Challenges Accounting Professionals Face Online

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do they have to become actively involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also maintain an active digital 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, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, you will need to assign a bigger share of your marketing budget to develop and maintain a website that can drive new leads, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and increase your marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change in time and some areas may need to be updated often. This requires a well-planned website and content management strategy in place.

One other problem that accounting businesses (and all other professions) face online, is that your site has an average of 30 seconds or less to give visitors the information they are looking for or they will leave the site.

“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 The Accounting Profession In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting sector that can evolve to meet online economy demands and can think outside the box in terms of marketing themselves better online.

This comprehensive article will help you uncover a number of ways to increase traffic and create significant improvements in your business online.

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

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, go here:

• Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• Using WordPress To Grow A Successful Business

Practical Tips For Improving Your Website

This section explains how to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what content works best for accounting websites, suggestions for improving your site’s layout and navigation, etc.

If you need help with website planning, go here: Planning Your Business Website: A Basic Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Web Pages

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

Products And Services

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

It should include services such as:

• Business accounting – planning, company structures, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting, 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, 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 these 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 what it stands for, its unique approach, community donations, etc.

It’s important to also include any professional awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote the company and position it above other competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are searching for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online, then make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know you, your team and your business better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with 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 also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow some of your team members on their social pages.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight each staff member’s experience, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your employees to prospective new clients. Screenshot image source: deepsky.com)

We have created a detailed tutorial about how to add a directory of employees to your web site using a free plugin here: How To Easily Create A Simple Employee Directory In Your WordPress Site

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your firm. It should include training offered, benefits, advancement opportunities, social aspects of working with your firm, etc. You should also include information about upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Include also 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 you on social media, etc.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients what type of financial solutions you can implement to help solve their problems. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you are also helping to provide social proof online.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials and client reviews to grow your business online. Go here to learn more about this: Improve Your Conversions Using Knockout Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

It should include the following information:

• Name
• Your address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media web addresses
• Chat (optional)

If your business services multiple areas you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact info.

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

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing content such as news, product releases, educational information, opinions and discussions, videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Not many people know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin to attract targeted traffic to your web site, simply by adding new content on a regular basis to your website.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more: WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Create An Automated Web Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information Pages

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is vitally important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws and regulations are being contravened wherever you provide services to.

Depending on what products and services you provide, adding some or all of the following legal pages to your accounting website will help keep you 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 Linking Policy
• Financial/Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s globally competitive economy, content generosity has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

You want to provide great content with useful advice and tips that will get your visitors to share your web pages with others and come back for more information. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about doing business with your firm.

For example, for an accounting business, topics can include:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Business insurance
• Risk protection
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your prospective clients understand your accounting or financial services, such as forensic accounting, small business accounting, using office accounting software, reducing debt, understanding accounting conventions, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords and terms in your content that readers 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 and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful content for your site 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!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Experience

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

RSS Feeds

Using RSS feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and user experience in many ways.

If you provide useful information, other businesses will want to syndicate your content.

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other sites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are various ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your site from other sites, 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, search online for relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are some RSS 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

(Adding RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your site’s UX.)

Provide Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Forms and checklists can provide useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. They can also be great business planning tools.

You can provide online or downloadable forms and checklists covering a range of areas such as:

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

Provide Other Tools

Providing useful tools and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools to add to accounting websites. Other tools could include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2 of this detailed article, we discuss a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your accounting or financial services site that can help to improve your seo, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click on this link to read the rest of this guide:

• The Step-By-Step Guide To Building And Growing Your Accounting Or Financial Services Online Presence Successfully – Part Two

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