Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today are facing difficult challenges brought about by the digital economy.

Challenges Accountants Face Online

Today, more than ever, accountancy firms must work hard to stand out from the competition, source new clients, and keep their current business. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and figuring out smarter ways to promote your business online.

As well as investing money marketing offline, businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that they need to invest a greater amount of their marketing budget towards developing and maintaining a website that can drive clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and help them gain a wider amount of marketing exposure online.

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

One other difficult challenge that accounting firms face (and most other businesses for that matter), is that your site has around 30 seconds to give visitors what 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 CPAs

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the digital economy and think progressively about marketing their business better online.

The guide below will help you uncover opportunities to find new clientele and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting or financial services business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:

• Discover How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Lose You Business
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Small Business Using WordPress

How To Improve Your Website

In this section we will show you 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 and financial services websites, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, see this article: How To Plan Your Web Site - A Money-Saving Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require some basic web pages. Let’s review these.

Your Services And Products

You need to include a page that explains your services and any products that you offer.

It will include services such as:

• Business accounting – business planning, incorporation of companies, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, 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 a business, 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 the benefits of using these services and why they should choose you.

About Us Page

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

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

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

Our Team

If you are looking for inexpensive ways to sell more products online, then something you can do, is help your visitors get to know you and your organization better.

You want potential clients to relate to your business. 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 are probably not familiar with 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 that will allow your site visitors to follow some of your staff members on their social networks.

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

(Add a staff description page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about how to create and add an easy-to-update list directory of employees or team members to WordPress using a free WP plugin, go here: Plugin Tutorial: How To Add A Staff Directory

Career Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within the company. It would include training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. You can include information about additional career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Also include 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.

Testimonials & Case Studies

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 case studies and testimonials, you will also help to provide social proof online.

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

We have written a comprehensive article on using testimonials, case studies and client reviews here: How To Achieve Better Results Online Using Awesome Customer Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a contact page is crucial.

It should include:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Physical location
• Telephone number
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Live chat feature

If your business operates from several areas you want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact info.

Consider also including links to commonly-asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content like industry announcements, updates, training information, opinions on current topics, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing site is hard to keep updated or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used both as your business website and blog.

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic machine that can help begin attracting targeted traffic to your website, simply by adding regular content to your web site.

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

To learn more about this go here: Website Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your WordPress Website Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information Pages

It’s very important for accounting and financial services companies to make sure they have a website that complies will all legal requirements online, not just for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws and regulations in whichever region you service.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your 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 Links Policy
• Financial/Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site. If you would like to know more here: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

How To Improve Your Web Content

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

You will want to provide great content with useful advice and tips that will get your readers to share your content online and come back for more information. This is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk prevention
• Tips on structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

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

Remember to use keywords and terms in your content that your prospective clients would search for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for 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 Engagement And User Experience

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

Add RSS Feeds

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed provides lots of benefits for your website.

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

There are also benefits when it comes 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 visiting sites of relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of useful RSS feeds 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

(Use RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can give them useful instructions and resources to complete tasks. Forms and checklists can also be great business planning tools.

You can provide forms and checklists covering a range of topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Checklist
• Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Online Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools to add to accounting websites. Other tools could include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we look at a several online tools you can add to your accounting or financial services website using WordPress plugins and themes that improve your seo, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

Click here to keep reading:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Increasing User Engagement And Traffic Generation

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