Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital information age has not only transformed business worldwide, it has also created a growing number of challenges and great opportunities for certified public accountants and financial service providers.

Challenges Accountants Face Online

Today, more than ever, certified public accountants must work hard and find smarter ways to stand out from the crowd, source new clients, and keep their current business. Not only do they have to actively participate in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop and maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your business services online.

In addition to spending money in offline marketing activities, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other web-marketing savvy accounting businesses, you will need to allocate a more significant part of your budget to developing and maintaining a website that will bring new clients, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and social media, and help to give you wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change in time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires a well-planned website and content management strategy in place.

One other challenge that accounting businesses (and most other businesses) face online, is that your site has an average of thirty seconds to provide users with what they are searching for 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 Accountants In The Web Economy

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting profession that can adapt to meet online challenges and think progressively about improving their online marketing skills.

In this guide, you will learn about new ways to increase traffic and improve your business online.

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

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

• Discover Why A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Potential Customers
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Business Using A WordPress Site

Tips To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

In this section we will start with the basics and show you how to improve your accounting website and get better results online. We will look at what pages your website needs, what type of content you need, your layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, read this detailed guide: Planning Your Website: A Money-Saving Primer For Business Owners

Essential Pages

All business websites need several basic web pages. Let’s go over these.

Description Of Products And Services

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

This page should include services such as:

• Business accounting – business planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, 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 businesses, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what your services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

About Us

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

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

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

Staff

Are you looking for ideas to sell more products or services online? Then something you can do, is make it easier for prospective clients to get to know, like and trust you and your business better.

Prospective clients need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff or team members. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors are probably not very 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 also include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow individual staff members on their social pages.

On this page, make sure to highlight your staff member’s expertise, 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 page that introduces your staff to prospective new clients. Image source: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to add an easy-to-maintain list of employees to your website without coding skills, refer to this tutorial: How To 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 the company. It would include training provided, employee benefits, opportunities for advancement, social aspects of working with your firm, etc. You can also include case studies of recruits who have established a solid career path thanks to your firm and information such as the job outlook and upcoming 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 the page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show potential clients what it’s like to do business with your firm. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients also provides social proof online.

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

We have written extensively about using testimonials, case studies and user reviews to grow your business online. To learn more about this go here: Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Meaningful User Testimonials

Contact Us

Having a functional contact page is absolutely necessary.

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

• Name
• Your physical location
• Phone number
• Fax number
• Contact email address
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media web addresses
• Interactive chat

If you have several areas you want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact information.

Consider also including links to the most commonly asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content like announcements, updates, useful articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Something few people know about, is that WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that will help begin to deliver web traffic to your web site, simply by publishing new content on a regular basis to your website.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more: WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Generating More Website Visitors Automatically With WordPress

Legal Information

As a professional accountant or financial services provider, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is really important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any laws and regulations wherever you provide services to.

Adding the legal pages below to your accounting website will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Financial/Health 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: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Improving The Content On Your Website

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

Providing great content with advice and tips will get your readers to share your content and come back for more information. Publishing content is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about doing business with your firm.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Business insurance
• Risk prevention
• Tips on structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

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

Remember to use the same keywords in your content that prospective clients will be searching for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to 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!

Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Add RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your website.

If you provide information that adds value to others, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are several ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits 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.

To find useful RSS feeds just visit sites of finance and tax-related government departments and key industry bodies.

For example, here are a few feeds containing useful information that 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

(RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your accounting website’s UX.)

Provide Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your readers. They can provide users with useful instructions and resources to complete a task. Forms and checklists are also great planning tools.

You can provide forms and checklists covering a range of subjects such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Company Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Adding Unique Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools to add to accounting websites. Other tools could include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part two of this detailed guide, we discuss a several online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins that can improve seo, improve user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.

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

To continue reading, click this link:

• A Complete Step-By-Step Guide To Growing An Accounting Website – Part Two

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