Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today are facing increasingly difficult challenges brought about by the digital economy.

Online Challenges For The Accounting & Financial Services Profession

Today, more than ever, accountants must work hard and find smarter ways to stand out from the competition, find new business, and retain current business. Not only do they have to actively participate in the communities and industries they serve, they must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having an effective website and learning how to better promote your business online.

As well as spending dollars in offline marketing activities, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, you will need to assign a greater share of your budget towards the development and maintenance of a website that will bring in clients, engage visitors, outrank the competition in search engines and help you create wider exposure online.

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

Another challenge that CPAs face, and other businesses for that matter, is that your site has only about 30 seconds or less to provide visitors what they are searching for or they will go 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 Certified Public Accountants In The Web Economy

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for accounting companies that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the digital economy and who can think progressively about marketing their services better online.

In this detailed guide, you will discover ways and opportunities to increase web traffic and create significant improvements in your business online.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting business website.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, see these articles:

• Learn Why A Poorly Constructed Web Site Can Lose You Business And What To Do About It
• Learn How To Grow Your Business Using WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

Let’s start by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your accounting 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 structure, etc.

If you need specific help with website planning, read this article we have written: How To Plan A Website: A Money-Saving Blueprint For Business Owners

Improving Your Web Pages

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

Services Description Page

It’s essential to have a page that lists your products and services.

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

• Business – planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, financing, budgeting, 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. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using your services and why they should book an appointment.

About Us

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

It’s important to list any professional awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your company and position it above the competition.

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

Your Staff

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cost-effective ways to grow your business online? Then one of the things you can do, is help your prospects get to know, like and trust you and your organization better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be familiar with accounting terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons so your prospective clients can follow your team members on their social networks.

In this page, make sure to outline your staff member’s experience, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your staff to prospective new clients. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about how to create and add an easy-to-update list of staff members to your web site with no coding skills required, go here: How To Create A Simple Employee List For Your WordPress Site Without Editing Code

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities within your organization. This page should include training, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. It should include information such as the job outlook and career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain a positions available section in this page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to this page, join your contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to show potential clients businesses minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a web page with case studies and client reviews also establishes social proof online.

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

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and reviews improve your business online here: How To Create Better Results Online Using Profit-Boosting Client Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is essential.

Your contact page should include:

• Business Name
• Location of premises
• Telephone
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map and directions
• Website address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media networks
• Live Chat/Skype (optional)

If your business operates out of several areas you want to make that clear when displaying your address and contact info.

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

Blog Section

A blog can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business using content such as announcements, product updates, useful articles and tutorials, informative posts, how-to videos, infographics, etc.

If you already have an 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 website is hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can serve as both your website and blog.

You may not have been told about this, but WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that can instantly begin driving a stream of new targeted traffic to your website, simply by publishing content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can generate web traffic automatically to your website)

For more details, go here: WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into A Web Traffic Machine

Legal Information

As a professional accountant or financial services provider, having a website that complies will all legal requirements online is really important, not just for building trust with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching local, regional or federal laws or regulations in whatever location you do business in.

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

We have written a comprehensive article about adding legal pages to your website. If you would like to learn more here: What You Need To Know About Adding Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Website

In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, the willingness to deliver valuable content free of charge has become one of the key success differentiators for businesses.

You will want to provide great content with advice and tips that will get your visitors sharing your content and coming back for more. Using content is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services and products.

For example, topics for an accounting business could cover:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Risk prevention
• Tips on structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, 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, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use keywords in your content that readers 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 and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your 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 completely FREE!

Improve Visitor Experience

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

Adding RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides plenty of benefits for your site.

If you provide useful information, other sites will want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• RSS feeds allow users to subscribe
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are several ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

There are also benefits to providing valuable content on your website 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 loads of useful content by visiting sites of relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

Here are examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you could 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

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

Provide Downloadable Forms & Checklists

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

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

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

Add Unique Tools

Providing unique tools and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools you can add to accounting websites. Other applications can include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we discuss a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your site that can help to improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click here to access the rest of this article:

• A Complete Guide On How To Grow An Accounting Or Financial Services Business Online – Part Two

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