Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital business age has not only transformed business worldwide, it has also created a number of difficult challenges and opportunities for CPAs.

Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession

Now, more than ever, accountants must work hard to stand out from the crowd, find new business, and keep their current clients. Not only do they have to maintain an active presence in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better market your business online.

As well as spending money marketing offline, you will probably find that in order to compete with other accounting businesses, you will need to allocate a greater share of your marketing budget to develop and maintain a website that brings new clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps give you a wider degree of 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 even more importantly, the needs of the website will change over time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that CPAs face online, as do most businesses for that matter, is that you have an average of 30 seconds to provide visitors with what they are looking for 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 Accounting Businesses In The Digital Economy

As well as facing a number of business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for accounting firms that can adapt to meet digital demands and who can think progressively in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

The article below will help you uncover opportunities to find new accounts and improve your business presence online.

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

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see the articles below:

• Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Customers
• Learning WordPress – A Business Owner’s Guide

Ways To Improve Your Accounting Website

We’ll start first by covering some basics. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages you need, what content you need, ways of improving your site’s navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, read this article: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Web Pages

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

Your Products And Services

You need a page that explains your products and services.

This page will include services such as:

• Business – planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, budgeting, forecasting, financing, 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 a business, asset 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 appointment booking page.

About Us

This page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, community activities, etc.

It should also include any business awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that can be used to promote the company and set it above the competition.

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

Your Staff Page

Are you looking for quicker, simpler and cost-effective ideas to sell more products or services online or get people to stay longer on your site? Then make it easier for prospects to get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

You want people to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. This page should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not 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 even include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow your staff members on their social pages.

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

(Add a page that introduces your team to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily create and add an updatable simple employee directory in your web site using a free plugin, refer to this tutorial: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff Directory In Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Career Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities within your company. It would include training, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities sponsored or encouraged by your firm, etc. You can include information such as the job outlook and 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 you on social media, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to show potential clients what it’s like to do business with your organization. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you will also help to provide visitors social proof.

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

We have written extensively on using testimonials and client reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more: Discover How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Leads Using Meaningful Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a contact page is essential.

It should include the following information about your company:

• Company Name
• Physical location
• Telephone number
• Fax number
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Chat feature (optional)

If your business services multiple areas you should make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

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

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically include a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing timely content like industry events, product updates, training information, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

You may not know this, but WordPress can turn into an automated traffic machine that will attract new visitors to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

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

For more details: Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your Website Into A Web Traffic Machine

Legal Information Pages

It’s very important to ensure they have a compliant website, not just for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being breached wherever you provide services to.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your accounting or financial services website will help keep you out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), 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
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more: Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips For Improving Your Content

In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, being generous with content that educates and informs visitors has become one of the key differentiators for businesses that sell similar products or provide similar services.

By committing to providing great content with advice and tips, you will get your visitors to share your web pages online with others and come back for more. Using content is the most effective way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers understand your services, such as finance accounting, business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, understanding accounting conventions, etc.

Remember to use relevant keywords and terms in your content that readers would search 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 show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to 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 completely FREE!

Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving your site’s user experience (generally referred to as UX) will help 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.

Adding RSS Feeds

Using RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in a number of different ways.

If you provide information 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 in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared
• Feeds allow users to subscribe
• A feed provides links to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes 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 visiting sites of finance-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

For example, here are some useful RSS feeds you may want to add 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

(Using RSS feeds can help to improve your accounting site’s user experience.)

Provide Forms And Checklists

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and forms can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to complete a necessary task. They are also great business planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Not-For-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Adding Unique Tools

Providing unique online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools you can add to accounting websites. Other applications would include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we take a look at a number of WordPress-based tools you can add to your website that improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click on this link to continue:

• Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving Search Engine Optimization, Better User Engagement And Web Traffic Generation

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