Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals face many new challenges in today’s digital economy, especially when it comes to growing a successful presence online.

Online Challenges For Certified Public Accountants

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to become more involved in the communities and industries you serve, you must also develop and maintain an active web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and learning how to better market your business online.

In addition to spending dollars in offline marketing activities, businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be allocated towards the development and maintenance of a website that attracts leads, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps create wider reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change in time and many areas will need to be updated frequently. This requires a well-developed web and content management strategy.

One other problem that accounting firms (and most businesses) face with their websites, is that they have around thirty seconds or less to provide users what they are looking for or they will find what they are looking for 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 Accounting Businesses In The Web Economy

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting profession that can adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and can think outside the box when it comes to marketing their business better online.

This article will help you uncover new ways to attract new clientele and improve your business results online.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your accounting business online, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress platform to power your accounting or financial services website.

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

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Business And What To Do About It
• WordPress – The Business Owner’s Guide

Useful Tips To Improve Your Website

Let’s start by covering the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your accounting website and get better results. We show you what pages a financial services site needs, what type of content works best for accounting websites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, see this detailed step-by-step guide: How To Plan Your Business Website: A Money-Saving Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Web Pages

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

Products And Services

You need to include a page that explains your services or products.

This page should include services such as:

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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and why they should choose you.

Who We Are

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

Remember to include any awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote your company and position it above the competition.

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

Staff

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cheaper ideas to sell more products online? Then one of the things you can do, is help your visitors get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

Potential clients need 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 brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow your staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight each team 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 team profile page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to add a simple and easy-to-maintain list of employees in WordPress using a free plugin, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Add A Staff Directory

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within your organization. This page should include training, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and upcoming 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 the page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to show potential clients what kind of solutions you are capable of implementing to help them solve problems. Adding a web page with case studies and client reviews also helps to establish social proof.

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

To learn more about using testimonials and client reviews go here: How To Improve Your Sales With Effective Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is essential.

It should provide the following information about your company:

• Name
• Address
• Phone
• Facsimile number
• Contact email
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Live Chat/Skype

If you operate from multiple locations you will want to make this clear when showing the address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ section, useful pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using content like company events, product updates, useful articles, informative posts, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an established accounting or financial services website, 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 manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can serve both as your website and your blog.

You may not have been told about this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn into an automated traffic machine that can begin delivering web traffic to your website, simply by adding new content to your website on a regular basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Automatically Drive More Web Traffic For Your Business With WordPress

Legal Info Pages

It’s crucial to make sure they have a compliant website, not just for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being broken wherever your business is located.

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

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips For Improving Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the earlier you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from competing businesses.

By committing to providing great content with information and tips, you will get your visitors sharing your web pages and coming back for more information. Publishing content is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospects about your business and about doing business with your organization.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure your self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, tax accounting, office accounting software, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords in your content that prospective clients will be searching 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 show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways To Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides many benefits for your business.

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

Some of the benefits of having other businesses syndicate your content, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• It provides a way for links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to adding syndicated content to your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find useful RSS feeds for your website, search online for finance-related government departments and key industry bodies.

Here are examples of 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 feeds can help to improve your site’s user experience.)

Adding Forms & Checklists

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your visitors. They can provide step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a task. They can also be great planning tools.

Forms and checklists could include areas such as:

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

Online Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications for businesses can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools to add to accounting websites. Other applications would include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2 of this guide, we discuss a number of online tools you can use in your accounting website using WordPress plugins that can help improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

***

This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to build your accounting business online.

To continue reading, click this link:

• Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins And Themes For Improving SEO, Increasing User Engagement And Generating More Web Traffic

Subscribe To WPCompendium.org And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!

***

***

***