Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The online economy has not only revolutionized businesses globally, it has also created a number of challenges and opportunities for accountants.

Online Challenges For Accountants

Now, more than ever, certified public accountants must work hard to remain competitive, source new business, and retain current clientele. Not only do they have to become actively involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and searching for smarter ways to grow your business services online.

As well as investing dollars advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to compete with other web-marketing savvy accounting businesses, increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget will need to be delegated to develop and manage a website that drives leads, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and helps to increase your presence online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and some aspects may need to be updated often. This requires having a well-planned web and content management strategy in place.

Another difficult challenge that accounting businesses (and other professions) face with their websites, is that your site has only around 30 seconds to help users find the information they are looking for or they will leave the site.

“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 Accountants

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

This article will help you uncover new ways to source more business and improve your business presence online.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS) to power your accounting or financial services business website.

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform, see the articles below:

• Discover How A Poorly Designed Website Can Cost You Business
• The Small Business Owner’s Guide To Understanding WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

This section covers ways to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what pages your website needs, what content works best for accounting websites, tips for improving your site’s layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, read this detailed guide: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Your Website Pages

All business websites require some essential pages. Let’s discuss these.

Description Of Products And Services

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

Your page will include services such as:

• Business – planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, forecasting, budgeting, financing, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, planning, reviewing, auditing, advice, problem resolution
• Investment strategies
• Corporate finance
• 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 the benefits of using these services and direct them to your appointment booking page.

About Us Page

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

Remember to also include any accounting awards, recognitions, certifications, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above the competition.

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

Meet Your Staff

If you are looking for ideas to sell more products or services online and increase user interaction with your site, then help your prospective clients get to know you, your team and your organization better.

Your business needs to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your people. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors are probably not well-versed in accounting terms your bio descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow selected team members on their social pages.

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

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

We have written a detailed tutorial about how to easily add a simple team directory in your web site without messing with code here: Adding An Employee List Directory: Plugin Tutorial

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within the company. This page could include training offered, benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and 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, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what type of financial solutions you will implement to help solve their problems. By adding a page with client reviews and case studies, you will also help to provide potential clients with social proof.

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

We have written extensively on using testimonials and client reviews improve your business online. If you would like to know more here: Learn How To Turn More Visitors Into Qualified Prospects Using Highly Effective Client Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a functional contact page is essential.

It should include some or all of the following information:

• Business Name
• Physical location
• Telephone
• Facsimile number
• Email address
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Live Chat/Skype

If you operate from different locations you will want to make this clear when displaying the address and contact information.

You could also include links to an FAQ section, useful pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add A Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing content like company announcements, updates, educational information, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, media presentations, etc.

If you already have an established website, then consider adding a WordPress-driven blog to promote your organization.

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing accounting website is very hard to manage or not giving you the results you want, then WordPress can act both as your website and business blog.

Very few businesses know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic system that will begin delivering a stream of targeted traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your website.

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

Go here to learn more: Web Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your WordPress Website Into An Automated Web Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

Having a compliant website is very important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking local, regional or federal laws and regulations wherever you service clients.

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, and other potential legal threats or inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Links Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site here: Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

Tips For Improving The Content On Your Website

In today’s globally competitive economy, the sooner you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the quicker you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from competing businesses.

You will want to provide great content with useful advice and tips that will get your visitors to share your content and come back for more. Content marketing is a great way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your products and services.

For example, topics for an accounting business could include:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your prospective clients understand your accounting or financial services, such as finance accounting, tax accounting, office accounting software, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use specific keywords and terminology in your content that your 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 you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for your 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!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed provides 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 syndicating your content to other sites using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregator services
• RSS provides various ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read your content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits to adding syndicated content to your website from other sites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

To find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website, search online for relevant government departments or key industry bodies.

Below we have listed examples of RSS feeds containing useful information that you may want to add 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

(Using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve your site’s user experience.)

Checklists & Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. Checklists and forms can provide visitors with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to complete a task. Forms and checklists are great business 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 Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Sole Trader Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Unique Tools

Providing useful tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your potential clients. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools to add to accounting websites. Other applications can include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part two of this detailed article, we look at a number of WordPress plugins you can use in your accounting or financial services site that can help improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section 1.

Click on this link to access Part 2:

• The Complete Step-By-Step Guide To Building And Growing An Accounting Or Financial Services Business Online Using WordPress – Part Two

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