Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants face a number of challenges in today’s online economy, especially when it comes to growing a business online.

Online Challenges For Certified Public Accountants

CPAs today must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do you have to maintain a strong presence in the communities and industries you serve, you must also maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better promote your business services online.

As well as investing money in offline marketing, businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that they will need to designate a more significant share of their marketing budget towards the development and maintenance of a website that will attract new leads, engage visitors, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help to give their business wider marketing exposure online.

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

Another problem that accounting organizations face, as do most other businesses for that matter, is that your site has an average of thirty seconds to provide visitors with what they are searching for or they will go away.

“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

Online Opportunities For Certified Public Accountants

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting profession that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the digital economy and who can think outside the box in terms of improving their online marketing skills.

This detailed guide will help you uncover a number of ways to attract new visitors and build more online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your accounting website or blog.

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

• Discover How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Potential Buyers And What To Do About It
• WordPress For Small Business Owners – An Online Guide To Building Your Successful Business Using A WordPress Blog

How To Improve Your Website

This section will show you how to improve your accounting website and get better results. We show you what pages your website needs, what content works best for accounting websites, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, read this detailed guide: The Web Site Planning Process Explained: A Basic Guide For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

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

Services And Products Page

It’s essential to have a page that explains your products and services.

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

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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about what these services do and why they should book an appointment.

About Us Page

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

It’s important to include any accounting awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote the company and position it above other competitors.

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

Staff Page

If you are searching for ways to sell more products or services online and increase user interaction on your site, then help prospective clients get to know you, your team and your business better.

People need 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 mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in accounting terms your 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 so your site visitors can follow your staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to highlight your employee’s qualifications, 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 an employee description page. Image source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily create and add a list directory of employees or team members to WordPress with no coding skills required, go here: WordPress Plugin Tutorial: How To Easily Add An Employee Directory

Work With Us

This is a listing of career opportunities within the company. It would include type of training provided, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities sponsored or encouraged by your organization, etc. You can include case studies of trainees who have risen within your company and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Include also a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, subscribe to your contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients them minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a page with case studies and client reviews also helps to provide social proof.

(Add a page to your site with case studies and testimonials. Image sourced from: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively about using case studies, testimonials and reviews to grow your business online. For more details: How To Achieve Better Results Online Using Meaningful Client Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is essential.

It should include some or all of the following:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Physical address
• Phone
• Fax
• Contact email address
• Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media profiles
• Online chat feature

If your business services several locations you should make this clear when showing the address and contact info.

You could also include a few links for the most commonly asked questions, main pages, special offers, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content like industry events, product updates, training information, discussions on current topics, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an existing site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your firm.

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

Something few people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin driving a stream of web traffic to your website, simply by publishing content on a regular basis to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate new visitors automatically to your site)

Go here to learn more: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your WordPress Blog Into An Automated Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

As a professional accountant, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucial, not just for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws and regulations are being broken wherever you provide services to.

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

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

Go here if you would like to learn more about adding legal pages to your website: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site

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

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

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

• How balance sheets work
• 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
• Protecting revenues
• Tips on structuring 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 readers understand your accounting services, such as forensic accounting, business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords and terms in your articles that your readers will be searching for online.

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 exactly how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating useful 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!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide many benefits for your site.

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

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

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• A feed provides links back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides a number of ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes 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.

You can find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website by visiting sites of relevant government departments and respected industry bodies.

For example, here are some exaples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could add 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 site’s UX.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. Checklists and forms can provide users with step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a task. Checklists and forms can also be great planning tools.

Forms and checklists can address subjects such as:

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Company Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are popular tools for accounting websites. Other applications would include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section of this guide, we will be discussing a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your accounting website that can help improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1 of this article on ways to grow your accounting business online.

To view Part Two, click this link:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins That Can Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Generate More Traffic

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