Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today face significant challenges.

Challenges Accounting & Financial Professionals Face Online

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do they have to become more involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop and maintain an active digital presence. This includes having a website and learning smarter ways to promote your business services online.

As well as spending money marketing offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be directed towards developing and managing a website that drives clients, engages users, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and gives your business a wider amount of exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your web 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 many aspects will need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other problem that accountancy firms face with their websites (as all other businesses do for that matter), is that your site has only around 30 seconds or less to help users find the information they need 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 Certified Public Accountants In The Web Economy

As well as facing many new challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting profession that can evolve to meet the challenges of the online economy and think progressively in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

In this guide, you will learn about ways to attract more visitors and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System to power your accounting or financial services website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Lose You Potential Customers And What To Do About It
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Or Financial Services Site

We’ll start first by going over the basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content you need, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, go here: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Improving Your Web Pages

All websites require some essential pages. Let’s go over the pages your  should have and how to structure your website for best results.

Services Page

It’s essential to include a page that explains your products or services.

This page should include all the services you offer, such as:

• Business accounting – planning, incorporation of companies, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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, 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

This page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

It’s important to mention any business awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, publications, associations, etc., that could be used to promote your company and position it above the competition.

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

Our Team

Are you searching for cost-effective ways to grow your business online? Then help visitors get to know you and your business better.

People need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in accounting terms it 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 that will allow your prospective clients to follow some of your team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to highlight each person’s qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a ‘meet the team’ page. Image source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to add a list of employees in your website without touching code, see this tutorial: Adding A Staff Directory To Your WordPress Site

Work For Us

This is a listing of career opportunities within the organization. This page should include training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You should also include information about additional career opportunities in the accounting and financial services 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, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients businesses minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a web page with client reviews and case studies also establishes social proof online.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and reviews to grow your business online. For more details: Learn How To Improve Your Conversions With Standout User Testimonials

Contact Page

A contact page is absolutely necessary.

Your contact page should provide:

• Company Name
• Physical address
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Request for information – who to contact
• Social media web addresses
• Interactive chat feature

If your business operates in multiple areas you should make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

You can also include links to commonly-asked questions, useful pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to easily promote your business using timely content such as news and events, product releases, educational articles, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing website is very hard to add new content to or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can be used 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-generation machine that can help deliver targeted visitors to your business, simply by publishing content on a regular basis to your website.

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

Go here to learn more about this: WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into A Web Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

It’s really important to ensure they have a compliant website, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened wherever your do business in.

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 (e.g. Facebook), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions 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
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more about this: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

How To Improve The Content On Your Site

In today’s ultra competitive digital economy, the earlier you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Providing great content with information and tips will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more. Publishing content is a great way to educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your products and services.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Profit and loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Risk protection
• How to structure your 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 readers understand accounting services, such as finance accounting, tax accounting, tips on using office accounting software, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords in your articles that your readers would search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will teach 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. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

Improving website user experience (often referred to as UX) will help keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you different ways to improve visitor engagement and user experience.

Syndicating Content With RSS Feeds

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

If you provide useful content, other sites 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 updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• Allows users to subscribe
• It provides links to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to providing great information on your site 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 or respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of useful RSS feeds you may want to consider adding 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

(Add RSS feeds to improve your website’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. They can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. They can also be great planning tools.

Checklists and forms could address topics such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Checklist
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools to add to accounting websites. Others 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 website using WordPress plugins and themes that can help to improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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

To view the rest of this guide, click here:

• How To Successfully Grow Your Accounting Or Financial Services Web Presence With WordPress – Part 2

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