Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today face an increasing number challenges brought about by the online economy.

Online Challenges For CPAs

Accountants today must work harder than ever to remain in business. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your business services online.

In addition to spending money in offline marketing activities, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be delegated towards the development and maintenance of a website that attracts new clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and helps give your business wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website will change in time and sections may need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing well-developed web and content management strategy.

Another challenge that accounting businesses face online, as most other professions do for that matter, is that you have around 30 seconds or less to provide users with what they need 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 In The Digital Economy

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting sector that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and think strategically when it comes to marketing themselves better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn new opportunities to source more clients and create significant improvements in your accounting and financial business presence online.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your accounting business website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see the articles below:

• Learn Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Prospective Buyers
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Understanding WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what type of content works best, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, see this guide: Planning Your Website: A Practical Primer For Business Owners

Improve Your Website Pages

Professional websites need a number of essential pages. Let’s discuss these.

Description Of Products And Services

You need a page that explains your services and products.

Your page will include services such as:

• Business accounting – planning, company formation, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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, 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 your services do and why they should choose you.

About Us

This page needs to describe your business and explain to visitors what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

It should mention any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote your company and position it above the competition.

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

Staff

Are you searching for quicker, easier and cheaper ways to grow your business online? Then something you can do, is help your prospects get to know, like and trust your organization better.

You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t 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. This page should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to outline your team member’s experience, how their skills contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Image source: deepsky.com)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to easily add an updatable list directory of staff members to your web site using a free WP plugin, go here: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff Directory On Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Work For Us

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your organization. It should include type of training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working for your organization, etc. You can include stories of recruits who have risen within your firm and information about upcoming career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Include also 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 newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what type of financial solutions you are capable of implementing to help solve their problems. Adding a page with client reviews and case studies also provides prospective clients with social proof.

(Add a web page with testimonials from past clients and case studies. Image source: pcg-services.com)

To learn more about using client testimonials and reviews, refer to this article: How To Improve Your Conversions With Highly Effective Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a functional contact page is absolutely necessary.

It should include some or all of the following:

• Company Name
• Your physical location
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media web addresses
• Chat feature (optional feature)

If your business operates from multiple areas you will want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.

Consider also including a few links for commonly-asked questions, main pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as industry events, product updates, useful information, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established accounting 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 very hard to manage or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used as both your website and business blog.

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that can instantly begin attracting targeted traffic to your website, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this: WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your Website Into An Automated Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

It’s crucial to have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for establishing credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws or regulations wherever your business services clients.

Depending on the products and services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your site will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats and inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s ultra competitive global economy, the sooner you begin to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Providing great content with useful information and tips will get your readers to share your web pages and come back for more information. Content marketing is a great way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

For example, topics for an accounting business can cover the following:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk protection
• Tips on structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Dos 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 readers understand accounting services, such as forensic accounting, business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, understanding financial conventions, etc.

Remember to use relevant keywords in your content that your readers would search 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 show you how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality 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 100% FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving website 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 visitor engagement and user experience.

Adding RSS Feeds

Adding RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in several ways.

If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read 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 valuable information on your website from other websites, 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 by visiting sites of finance-related government departments or industry bodies.

Here are some feeds containing useful information that you may want to consider adding 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 accounting website’s user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to help increase user engagement, add value to your audience and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can provide users with useful instructions and resources to get necessary tasks done. Forms and checklists can also be great planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Sole Trader Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications for businesses is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools to add to accounting websites. Other applications could include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section of this detailed article, we take a look at a number of WordPress plugins and themes you can add to your website that can improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section 1 of this guide on ways to grow your accounting business web presence.

Click on this link to access the rest of this article:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With WordPress Plugins & Themes

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