Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress
Accountants today face an ever increasing number of challenges thanks to the digital economy.
Challenges Certified Public Accountants Face Online
Now, more than ever, accountants must work hard and find smarter ways to remain competitive, obtain new clients, and keep their current clientele. Not only do they have to participate in the communities and industries they serve, they must also develop an active web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your business online.
In addition to investing money marketing 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 assign a more significant portion of your budget towards developing and maintaining a website that can bring new clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and help increase your marketing exposure online.
This means that your website not only has to look professional, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs may change in time and sections may need to be updated frequently. This requires a sound web and content management strategy.
One other challenge that accounting businesses face with their websites (as most other businesses do for that matter), is that your site has only around thirty seconds to provide visitors what they are searching for or they will go away.
“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 CPAs
As well as facing many new challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that are willing to adapt to meet online challenges and think strategically when it comes to improving their online business marketing skills.
This article will help you uncover new ways to drive more traffic and create significant improvements in your accounting and financial business presence online.
As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting or financial services business website or blog.
To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System, see these articles:
- Discover Why A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Business And What To Do About It
- Everything You Need To Know About Growing A Successful Small Business With A WordPress Site
Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website
We’ll start first by covering some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your accounting website and get better results online. We show you what pages your website needs, what type of content works best for accounting websites, your navigation structure, etc.
If you need website planning assistance, visit this page: How To Plan Your Small Business Web Site: A Cost-Saving Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners
Your Web Pages
Professional websites require some basic pages. Let’s go over these.
Your Products And Services
It’s essential to include a page that explains your services and products.
Your page should include services such as:
- Business – planning, formation, 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 a business, transfers, etc.
- Lending and leasing
List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using these services and direct them to your appointment booking page.
About Us
The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, philanthropy, etc.
Remember to list any awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote the company and set it above your competitors.
(List all of your awards recognitions, certifications, accreditations, publications, associations, etc. in your About Us page. Screenshot image sourced from: deloitte.com)
Meet The Team
If you are looking for quicker and simpler ways to grow your business online or increase user interaction on your site, then one of the things you can do, is help your visitors get to know you and your organization better.
Potential clients need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. 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. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow selected team members on their social pages.
On this page, make sure to outline each staff member’s qualifications, 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 a ‘meet the team’ page. Screenshot source: deepsky.com)
For a detailed tutorial on how to create and add a simple and easily updatable directory of staff or team members to your web site with no coding skills required, go here: How To Easily Add A Staff List Directory To WordPress
Job Opportunities Page
List any career opportunities within the firm. It could include type of training provided, benefits, professional development, etc. It should include stories of graduates who have established a solid career path thanks to your company and information such as the job outlook and additional career opportunities in the accounting and financial services 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 your social pages, etc.
Case Studies
Case studies and reviews from clients are a great way to show potential clients them minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with client reviews and case studies, you are also helping to establish social proof.
(Add a web page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Image sourced from: pcg-services.com)
We have written a detailed article on using testimonials, case studies and reviews improve your business online. Go here to learn more: How To Convert More Visitors Into Qualified Leads With Powerful Testimonials
Contact Us
A clean contact page is crucial.
Your contact page should include the following information:
- Business Name
- Location
- Telephone
- Fax
- Contact email
- Map and directions
- Website address
- Contact form
- Request for more information – who to contact
- Links to social media pages
- Live Chat/Skype
If your business operates from different locations you will want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact information.
You can also include links to an FAQ section, useful pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.
Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section
A blog is a powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as news, company updates, educational articles and tutorials, informative posts, how-to videos, webinars, etc.
If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your business.
If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing site is very hard to add new content to or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can be used as both your business website and blog.
Not many businesses know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can begin attracting a stream of targeted traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)
For more info, see this article: Website Traffic Blueprint – Learn How To Automatically Attract More Website Traffic For Your Business
Legal Information Pages
As a professional business, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is crucial, not just for building credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being contravened wherever your business is located.
Depending on the products and services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting or financial services website 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 Policy
- Terms Of Use
- Website Disclaimer
- Affiliate Agreement
- Anti-Spam Policy
- Compensation Disclosure
- DMCA Notice
- Earnings Disclaimer
- External Links Policy
- Financial/Health Disclaimers
- Refund Policy
- Video/Audio Terms
- and others
We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. For more details: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your Site
How To Improve Your Web Content
In today’s globally competitive economy, the earlier you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.
You want to provide great content with useful advice and tips that will get your visitors to share your content online and come back for more. This is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your products and services.
For example, for an accounting business, topics could cover:
- Explanations of balance sheets
- Overlooked tax deductions
- Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
- Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
- Business cashflow planning
- Business insurance
- Risk protection
- Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
- Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)
You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as software accounting, tax accounting, business auditing, reducing business debt, understanding financial concepts, etc.
Remember to include keywords and terms in your articles that prospective clients would search for.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating useful content for your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. 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 site’s user experience (generally referred to as UX) helps you keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve your visitor engagement and UX.
RSS Feeds – Content Syndication
RSS feeds provide lots of benefits for your accounting business.
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 updates are in one place
- your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Can be shared online
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- An RSS feed provides links back to your site
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can view the content on their mobile device using different applications)
- It’s built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits to adding syndicated content to your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.
You can find many useful RSS feeds for your website by searching online for relevant government departments or respected industry bodies.
Here are some useful RSS 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
(Use RSS feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)
Adding Checklists & Forms
Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Forms and checklists can provide step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a task. Checklists and forms are also great business planning tools.
You can provide a range of forms and checklists (or links to these) covering topics such as:
- How To Set Up A Company
- Rental Property Checklist
- Fundraising Governance Checklist
- Disclosure Requirements
- Partnership Tax Checklist
- Trust Tax Checklist
- Income Tax Variation Forms
Other Tools
Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools you can add to accounting websites. Other applications would include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.
In part 2, we will be discussing a several online tools you can add to your website using WordPress plugins that can help to improve seo, improve user engagement and generate more visitors to your business.
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This is the end of part one of this guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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