Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants face many new challenges in today’s digital economy, especially when it comes to growing a presence online.

Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain competitive. Not only do they have to participate in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop an active digital presence. This includes having a dynamic website and figuring out better ways to market your business online.

As well as investing money advertising offline on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv, etc., you will probably find that in order to compete with other web-marketing savvy accounting businesses, you will need to designate a larger amount of your budget to developing and maintaining a website that brings in prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and helps to increase your marketing exposure online.

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

Another difficult challenge that accounting businesses face (and all other businesses for that matter), is that your site has an average of 30 seconds or less to help users find 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 Online Economy

As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting sector that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the digital economy and think strategically when it comes to marketing their business services better online.

This comprehensive article will help you uncover ways and opportunities to attract and engage new visitors and create significant improvements in your business presence online.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your accounting website, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your accounting business website or blog.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, go here:

• Why A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Money And What To Do About It
• WordPress For Business Owners – The Complete Guide To Growing Your Successful Business Using WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

This section explains how to improve your accounting website and get better results. We will look at what pages a financial services site needs, what type of content you need, layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your website, visit this page: Planning Your Web Site: A Cost-Saving Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

Professional websites need several basic web pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  should have and how to set up your website for best results.

Products And Services

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

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

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

Make sure to 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.

Who We Are

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

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

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

Your Staff

Are you looking for quicker and simpler ideas to grow your business online and increase user interaction on your site? 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 members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors won’t be 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. It should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow selected team members on their social pages.

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 outline your team member’s qualifications, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your staff members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to create and add an easy-to-update directory of staff or team members to your website, go here: How To Create A Simple Employee List For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Job Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within your company. This page would include type of training provided, benefits, advancement opportunities, social aspects of working with your firm, etc. You can include case studies of graduates who have established a solid career path thanks to your organization and information about 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 newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to show potential clients what kind of accounting solutions you are capable of implementing to help them solve problems. Adding a web page with case studies and client reviews also helps to provide visitors social proof.

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

We have written extensively about using client testimonials and user reviews improve your business online. For more details, go here: Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Meaningful Testimonials

Contact Us

A contact page is absolutely necessary.

It should include the following information:

• Company Name
• Your physical address
• Phone
• Fax
• Contact email address
• Google Map
• Web URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Online chat (optional feature)

If your business operates out of different locations you want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact information.

Consider also including links to an FAQ page, main pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog

A blog is a very powerful business marketing tool. Many blogging platforms are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business using content like industry news, product releases, useful articles and tutorials, opinions on current topics, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting website is very hard to add new content to or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can become both your business website and blog.

You may not know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic machine that will help begin attracting a stream of web traffic to your website, simply by publishing content on a consistent basis to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can generate new visitors automatically to your site)

If you would like to know more here: Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Create A Web Traffic-Getting Machine

Legal Info Pages

As a professional accountant or financial services provider, ensuring that you have a website that complies will all legal requirements online is extremely important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws or regulations are being broken wherever you service clients.

Depending on what services and products you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your website will help you stay out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Page
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site here: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, content marketing has become one of the key business differentiators.

Providing great content with advice and tips will get your visitors to share your web pages and come back for more information. Content marketing is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure 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 prospective clients understand your accounting or financial services, such as finance accounting, tax accounting, business budgeting, reducing business debt, understanding accounting conventions, etc.

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

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information that will show exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content that will add value to your site 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 website user experience (typically referred to as UX) helps to keep visitors coming back and using your site. This section will show you different ways to improve your visitor engagement and UX.

Use RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide plenty of benefits for your website.

If you provide useful information, other sites 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 kept in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also a number of 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.

You can find RSS feeds with useful content for your website by searching online for finance-related government departments and well-known industry bodies.

For example, here are some feeds you could 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

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

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. They can give them useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. They are great business planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses is a great way to increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are some of the most popular tools for accounting websites. Other tools can include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we will be discussing a several online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins that can improve your search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one.

Click here to continue:

• How To Build And Grow An Accounting Business Online Successfully With WordPress – Part Two

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