Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today face significant and difficult challenges thanks to the web economy.

Challenges Accountants Face Online

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain in business. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop and maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective website and searching for better ways to market your business online.

In addition to investing money marketing offline, businesses in the accounting industry are now finding that they need to allocate a bigger share of their budget towards the development and maintenance of a website that drives new prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and helps give their business wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, the needs of your website will change in time and some areas will need to be updated frequently. This requires a well-planned web and content management strategy in place.

Another problem that accountants face with their websites, as do most businesses for that matter, is that your site has around 30 seconds to give users 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 Certified Public Accountants In The Online Economy

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to accounting companies that can evolve to meet the demands of the online economy and think progressively in terms of marketing their business better online.

In this guide, you will discover a number of ways to attract more visitors and create significant improvements in your business presence online.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting business website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see these articles:

• Learn How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Money
• An Online Guide To Growing Your Small Business Using A WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you ways to improve your accounting website and get better results. We show you what pages a financial services website needs, what content you need, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, go here: Planning Your Website - A Useful Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional business websites require some essential web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Your Products And Services

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

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

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

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us Page

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

This page should include any 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 professional awards accreditations, recognitions, certifications, publications, associations, etc. in the About Us page. Screenshot image sourced from: deloitte.com)

Staff

If you are looking for ideas to sell more products or services online or get people to stay longer on your site, then help visitors get to know, like and trust your organization better.

You want potential clients to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with accounting terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. It should also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow some of your team members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to highlight each employee’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your employees or team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image source: deepsky.com)

We have written a detailed tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-update simple team members directory to your website with no coding skills required here: Adding A Staff List Directory

Job Opportunities

List any career opportunities within the organization. This page would include training offered, benefits, professional development, social aspects of working for your firm, etc. You should also include stories of recruits who have established a solid career path thanks to your firm and information about career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what kind of solutions you are capable of implementing to help solve their problems. By adding a page with testimonials from past clients and case studies, you will also help to will also be establishing social proof online.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials. Screenshot source: pcg-services.com)

If you want to learn more about using testimonials, case studies and client reviews, refer to this article: How To Get Better Results Online With Powerful Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should include some or all of the following information:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your address
• Telephone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Request for more information – contact details
• Social media web addresses
• Interactive chat feature (optional feature)

If your business services different areas you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact information.

You should also include links to an FAQ section, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing content such as industry events, product updates, training information, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

You probably don’t know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation system that can help begin driving new visitors to your business, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

(WordPress can generate new traffic automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more: Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Attracting More Website Visitors For Your Business Automatically

Legal Information Pages

As a professional accountant or financial services provider, ensuring that you have a compliant website is vitally important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws and regulations are being contravened wherever your business services clients.

Adding the following legal pages to your website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. Go here to learn more about this: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Improving Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Providing great content with information and tips will get your readers to share your content online and come back for more information. This is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services.

For example, for an accounting or financial services business, topics could cover:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning
• Business insurance
• Risk protection
• 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 educational articles that will help your prospective clients understand your accounting services, such as finance accounting, tax accounting, business auditing, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to include the same keywords and terms in your content that readers would search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality 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!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving 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 user experience.

Add RSS Feeds

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

If you provide useful content, other sites will want to syndicate your content.

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

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• A feed provides links back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits to adding syndicated content to your website from other sites, 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 tax-related government departments and industry bodies.

Below we have listed some RSS feeds 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

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your accounting site’s user experience.)

Provide Checklists

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your audience. Checklists and forms can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks done. Checklists and forms 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 Checklist
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Adding Other Tools

Providing useful online tools and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools you can add to accounting websites. Others can include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section of this guide, we take a look at a number of online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins and themes that can improve your seo, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

Click here to read the rest of this guide:

• Tips For CPAs – WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

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