Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today face increasing challenges created by the online economy.

Challenges Accounting Professionals Face Online

Today, more than ever, accountants must find smarter ways to remain competitive, source new business, and retain current clients. Not only do you have to become more involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having a dynamic web presence and learning smarter ways to promote your business services online.

In addition to spending money advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to remain competitive, you will need to invest a more significant share of your marketing budget to develop and maintain a website that attracts new leads, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps you gain a wider amount of marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change in time and many areas will need to be updated frequently. This requires having a well-planned web and content management strategy in place.

Another difficult challenge that accounting organizations face online (as other businesses do for that matter), is that your site has only around 30 seconds or less to give visitors what they are looking for or they will look 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

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting sector that can adapt to meet the challenges of the digital economy and who can think strategically in terms of marketing themselves better online.

This guide will help you uncover ways to attract more visitors and improve your business presence online.

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

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), see these articles:

• Discover Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Business Using WordPress

Ways To Improve Your Website

This section covers how to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages your website needs, what type of content you need, your navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, read this detailed step-by-step guide: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Ways To Improve Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need some essential web pages. Let’s discuss these.

Products And Services Page

It’s essential to include a page that describes your products and services.

This page should include services such as:

• Business – planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and why they should book an appointment with you.

Who We Are

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

Remember to also list any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote the company and position it above your competitors.

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

Team

If you are looking for quicker and simpler ways to sell more products online or get people to stay longer on your site, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for prospects to get to know you and your business better.

You want prospects to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors will not tend to be that well-versed in accounting terms your bio 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 so your visitors can follow your team members on their social networks.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your employee’s expertise and 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 a staff description page. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to add an easy-to-manage simple employee directory to your WordPress site without coding skills, go here: How To Easily Add A Simple Staff List On Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills

Job Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your company. This page would include training offered, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and new career opportunities in the accounting and financial services 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, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show prospective clients the benefits of doing business with your company. By adding a page with reviews from clients and case studies, you will also help to will also be establishing social proof online.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials and user reviews to grow your business online. For more info, see this article: How To Improve Your Sales Conversions Using Awesome Client Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

It should provide the following information about your company:

• Company Name
• Your physical address
• Phone
• Fax
• Email address
• Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Chat/Skype (optional)

If your business services several areas you will want to make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

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

Add An Accounting Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content such as company events, company updates, educational articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an accounting or financial services site, 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 very hard to keep updated or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your website and your blog.

Not many businesses know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic system that will attract new targeted traffic to your web site, simply by adding regular content to your web site.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate web traffic automatically to your site)

To learn more about this go here: Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Growing Your Website Visitors Automatically

Legal Information

Having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is vitally important, not just for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws and regulations are being broken wherever your business services clients.

Depending on what services you provide, adding the following legal pages to your accounting or financial services site 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 Us
• Privacy Statement
• 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
• etc.

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your site here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website

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

You will want to provide great content with information and tips that will get your visitors to share your content and come back for more. This is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services and products.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a 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 informative articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of accounting services, such as forensic accounting, small business accounting, using office accounting software, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords and terms in your articles that your prospective clients would search for online.

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 you 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 marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

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

If you provide content that adds value to others, other businesses will want to syndicate your content.

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

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

There are also benefits to providing valuable content on your website from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find useful RSS feeds just search online for finance-related government departments or industry bodies.

Here are some 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

(Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to help increase user engagement and add value to your readers. They can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. Forms and checklists are great planning tools.

You can provide online or downloadable checklists and forms (or links to these) covering a range of subjects such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Online Tools

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

In part 2 of this detailed article, we look at a several WordPress plugins you can add to your site that can help improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

To view Part 2, click here:

• A Step-By-Step Guide To Growing Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website – Part Two

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