Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The online economy has not only transformed the way business is done globally, it has also created an increasing number of challenges and great opportunities for businesses offering accounting and financial services.

Online Challenges For Certified Public Accountants

Accounting businesses today must work harder than ever before to remain in business. Not only do they have to actively participate in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop and maintain an active digital presence. This includes having an effective website and searching for better ways to grow your business services online.

As well as investing money marketing offline, businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be allocated towards the development and maintenance of a website that brings in prospects, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and gives them wider marketing reach online.

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

Another challenge that accounting firms face online, as other professions do for that matter, is that your site has around thirty seconds or less to provide users 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 Accounting Services

As well as facing many new business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting sector that can adapt to meet online economy challenges and who can think progressively in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

This detailed guide will help you uncover new ways to increase traffic and improve your business presence online.

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 or financial services website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see the articles below:

• Discover How A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Lose You Customers And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Small Business Online Using A WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Website

This section looks at ways to improve your website and get better results online. We show you what pages an accounting site needs, what content works best for accounting websites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, read this guide: A Cost-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional websites need a number of basic pages. Let’s review these.

Services And Products

You need a page that lists your services and products.

This page will include all the services and products you offer, such as:

• Business – planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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 a business, transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

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.

Who We Are

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

It’s important to list any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your company and set it above other competitors.

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

Meet Our Team

If you are looking for ideas to sell more products online and get people to engage more with your site, then make it easier for prospects to get to know 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 employees or team members. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors are probably not that well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. It should even include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow individual staff members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to show the human side of your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight each staff member’s expertise, how their skills contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a staff description page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to easily create and add an easy-to-update simple team members directory to your website with no coding skills required, go here: WordPress Plugin Tutorial: How To Add An Employee List Directory To WordPress

We’re Hiring

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your company. It would include training, employee benefits, professional development, etc. It should include information about new career opportunities in the accounting industry.

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

Case Studies & Testimonials

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients them minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and client reviews, you will also help to provide social proof.

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

To learn more about using testimonials, case studies and reviews, refer to this article: Learn How To Improve Your Visitor-To-Sales Conversions Using Highly Effective User Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a functional contact page is essential.

It should provide visitors with the following:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your physical address
• Telephone number
• Facsimile number
• Contact email address
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Interactive chat feature

If your business operates in multiple locations you will want to make this clear when showing your address and contact info.

You could also include links to the most commonly asked questions, main pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to promote your business using timely content like news and events, company updates, training articles, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress-powered blog to promote your business.

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

Very few businesses know that WordPress can become an automated traffic system that will help begin to deliver targeted visitors to your web site, simply by publishing content to your website on a consistent basis.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Learn more here: Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Create A Web Traffic-Getting Machine With WordPress

Legal Pages

It’s vitally important to have a compliant website, not just for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking laws and regulations wherever your business services clients.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting site will help you stay out of trouble with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), 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 Links Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

If you want to learn more about adding legal pages to your site, refer to this article: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips On How To Improve Your Content

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 competing businesses.

You will want to provide great content with advice and tips that will get your visitors to share your content with others online and come back for more information. Using content is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospects about your business.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure 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 informative articles that will help your your readers understand your services, such as software accounting, small business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, understanding accounting concepts, etc.

Remember to include keywords in your articles that readers will be searching for.

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 you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, 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) helps keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you different ways to improve visitor engagement and user experience.

RSS Feeds

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

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

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

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides links to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also a number of benefits when it comes to providing valuable content on your site 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 useful content for your website by searching online for finance and tax-related government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are 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

(RSS feeds can help to improve your accounting site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

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

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Fundraising Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Sole Trader Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

Providing unique online tools and applications for businesses on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are some of the most popular tools for accounting websites. Others can include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In part 2, we take a look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your accounting website that can help to improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1 of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence.

Click here to keep reading:

• Tips For Accountants – Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation With Plugins & Themes

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