Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital information age has not only transformed businesses worldwide, it has also created new challenges and great opportunities for accounting and financial services businesses.

Challenges Accountants Face Online

Today, more than ever, CPAs must work hard to stand out from the crowd, source new business, and retain current clientele. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a dynamic web presence and learning how to better market your business online.

As well as investing dollars in offline marketing activities, you will probably find that in order to compete with other accounting businesses, you will need to invest a greater amount of your marketing budget to develop and maintain a website that attracts new prospects, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to give you a wider degree of marketing exposure online.

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

One other problem that accounting firms face with their websites (as do most professions for that matter), is that your site has an average of thirty seconds to help visitors find what they are searching for or they will look 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 loads of online opportunities available for accounting firms that can evolve to meet digital economy demands and think outside the box about marketing their business better online.

The guide below will help you uncover a number of ways to drive more traffic and improve your business presence online.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your web presence, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress CMS platform to power your accounting website or blog.

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

• Discover Why A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• Using A WordPress Site To Grow Your Small Business Online

Useful Tips For Improving Your Accounting Site

Let’s start by reviewing some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content you need, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, see this detailed guide we have written: How To Plan Your Small Business Website: A Cost-Saving Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Pages

All websites require several basic pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  need to have and how to structure your website for best results.

Products And Services

You need a page that lists your services and any products that you offer.

It should include all the products and services you offer, such as:

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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors 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 explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, sponsored community programs, etc.

It should also include any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your company and set it above other competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

Are you searching for quicker, easier and cost-effective ideas to sell more products online and get visitors to stay longer on your site? Then something you can do, is help your prospective clients get to know, like and trust 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 mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be very 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. This page should also include social buttons so your site visitors can follow individual team members on their social networks.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight each 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 a page that introduces your employees or team members to prospective new clients. Image source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily create and add an easy-to-maintain list of staff members in your website using a free WordPress plugin, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Tutorial: Adding A Staff Directory

Recruitment

List any career opportunities within your organization. This page should include type of training provided, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include stories of recruits who have risen within your organization and information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the accounting 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, subscribe to your announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials & Case Studies

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to show potential clients what type of solutions you are capable of implementing to help them solve problems. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials also helps your accounting website to provide social proof.

(Add a page to your site with reviews from clients and case studies. Screenshot 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: Learn How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Leads Using Highly Effective Client Testimonials

Contact Page

A clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

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

• Name
• Your physical location
• Telephone number
• Facsimile number
• Contact email address
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – who to contact
• Social media URLs
• Interactive chat

If you operate in different locations you should make this clear when showing the address and contact information.

You should also include links to commonly-asked questions, useful pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content like news and events, company updates, training articles, discussions on current topics, videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your services.

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

Very few people know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic-generation machine that will begin delivering targeted visitors to your site, simply by adding new content on a consistent basis to your website.

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

Go here to learn more about this: Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Increasing Your Website Visitors Automatically

Legal Pages

As a professional accountant or financial services provider, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is really important, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being broken wherever you provide services to.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding the following legal pages to your accounting website will help you stay 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 Policy
• 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
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Ways To Improve Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the ability to deliver valuable content to visitors free of charge has become one of the key success differentiators for businesses.

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

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

• How balance sheets work
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Risk prevention
• Tips on structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

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

Remember to use keywords and terms in your articles that readers will be searching for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach 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. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Tips For Improving User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides lots of benefits for your accounting business.

If you provide content 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 content updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• It provides a way for external links to point back 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 your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your website from other websites, 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 relevant government departments and key industry bodies.

Below we have listed some feeds containing useful information that you may want to consider adding 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 feeds can help to improve your accounting site’s UX.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to increase user engagement and add value to your audience. Forms and checklists can provide users with useful instructions and resources to complete a task. Forms and checklists can also be great planning tools.

Checklists and forms could cover subjects such as:

• How To Set Up A Business
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Company Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools you can add to accounting websites. Others could include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins that can help 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 section 1 of this step-by-step guide on ways to grow your accounting web presence.

To continue reading, click here:

• Online Business Tips For Certified Public Accountants – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Driving More Visitors To Your Site

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