Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital business age has not only revolutionised the way business is done around the world, it has also created many challenges and opportunities for businesses offering accounting services.

Online Challenges For Accountants

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop and maintain a strong web presence. This includes having a dynamic website and figuring out better ways to market your business online.

In addition to spending dollars advertising offline, 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 designate a larger portion of your budget towards developing and maintaining a website that drives new leads, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase your presence online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, load fast, and your website has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs will change over time and many aspects will need to be updated often. This requires a well-developed website and content management strategy in place.

One other difficult challenge that accounting organizations face (as most businesses do for that matter), is that they have an average of 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

Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to accounting firms that can adapt to meet online challenges and think strategically in terms of marketing their business services better online.

In this detailed guide, you will discover a number of ways to increase web traffic and improve your business results online.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your accounting business online, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system to power your accounting website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:

• Learn How A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Potential Buyers And What To Do About It
• A Complete Guide To Building Your Successful Small Business Using WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Site

This section covers how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages a financial services website needs, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services websites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need specific help with website planning, go here: How To Plan A Website - A Cost-Saving Primer For Business Owners

Essential Web Pages

All websites need some basic pages. Let’s discuss these.

Products And Services

You need a page that explains your services and products.

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

• Business – planning, company formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, budgeting, financing, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, 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 the benefits of using these services and why they should book an appointment.

About Us

The ‘About Us’ page needs to describe your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

This page should include any awards, accreditations, certifications, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your company and set it above the competition.

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

Staff Page

If you are looking for quicker and simpler ways to grow your business online and increase user interaction on your site, then help your prospects get to know you and your business better.

Potential clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff members. It should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be 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. This page should even include social buttons so your site visitors can follow your team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline each person’s experience, how their skills and knowledge add value to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add an employee page. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to add a simple and easy-to-manage list directory of employees to your site without coding skills, see this tutorial: How To Easily Add A Simple Employee Directory On Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your company. This page could include type of training provided, 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.

Maintain 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 your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients, you are also helping to provide prospective clients with social proof.

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

We have written extensively about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews improve your business online. For more details, go here: Improve Your Sales Conversions Using Sales Boosting User Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a functional contact page is crucial.

It should provide visitors with some or all of the following:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Address
• Telephone
• Fax number
• Email address
• Google Map and directions
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Online Chat/Skype

If your business services several locations you should make that clear when showing your address and contact information.

Consider also including a few links for the most commonly asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

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

If you already have an established accounting or financial services 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 website is very hard to manage or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can be used as both your website and your blog.

Something not many businesses know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin to drive targeted visitors to your web site, simply by publishing new content to your website on a regular basis.

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

For more details: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Attract More Web Traffic For Your Business

Legal Info Pages

As a professional accountant, having a compliant website is crucially important, not just for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching local, regional or federal laws or regulations in whichever area or location you provide services to.

Depending on the services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting or financial services site will help keep you out of legal hot water 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
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site. For more details, go here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the earlier you begin to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Providing great content with information and tips will get your visitors to share your content online and come back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about doing business with you.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Profit and loss statements
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk protection
• Structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers understand your accounting services, such as forensic accounting, tax accounting, using office accounting software, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

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

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your web site, save money creating useful 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!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Syndicating Content Using RSS Feeds

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide lots of benefits for your business.

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

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
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared online
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• It provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. view your 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 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, visit sites of relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are some exaples of 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

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better UX.)

Adding Online Checklists

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to help increase visitor engagement, add value to your audience and provide something unique. Checklists and forms can provide visitors with useful instructions and resources to perform a task. Forms and checklists are great business planning tools.

You can provide a range of online or downloadable checklists and forms covering areas such as:

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

Add Online Tools

Providing unique online tools and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools for accounting websites. Other applications would include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section of this guide, we will look at a number of WordPress plugins you can add to your site that can help improve search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

***

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

To continue, click here:

• Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins That Improve SEO, Increase User Engagement And Drive More Web Traffic

Want To Get Automatically Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!

***

***

***