Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

This article focuses on helping accountants and financial service professionals grow their business online and contains useful information on ways to improve the effectiveness of your accounting or finance-related web presence.

Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

How To Build And Grow An Accounting Or Financial Services Business OnlineAccounting professionals today face an increasing number challenges created by the online economy.

Challenges CPAs Face Online

Today, more than ever, accountants must work hard to remain competitive, obtain new clients, and keep their current clients. Not only do you have to actively participate in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also maintain a strong digital presence. This includes having a website and learning how to better market your business services online.

In addition to investing money advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete with other accounting businesses, you will need to invest a larger portion of your budget to developing and maintaining a website that brings in prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and helps give you wider marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website layout has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that your site’s needs may change in time and sections will need to be updated often. This requires the implementation of a sound website and content management strategy.

One other challenge that accounting businesses face, as do other businesses for that matter, is that they have only about 30 seconds to give visitors what they need or they will look 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 CPAs

As well as facing many business and technology changes, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to accounting firms that can evolve to meet digital demands and think outside the box about improving their online business marketing skills.

In this guide, you will learn about a number of ways to find more clients and improve your business online.

Important

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your accounting web presence, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting website.

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

Practical Tips For Improving Your Website

We’ll start first by reviewing some basics. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages you need, what content works best, useful tips for improving your site’s layout and navigation, etc.

If you need specific help with website planning, read this detailed step-by-step guide we have written: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Improving Your Website Pages

Professional business websites need a number of basic pages. Let’s review the pages your  should have and how to structure your accounting website for best results.

Description Of services And Products

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

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

  • Business accounting – business planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting, 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

Make sure to 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 with you.

About Us Page

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

It’s important to mention any accounting awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your company and position it above your competitors.

List all of your professional awards certifications, recognitions, accreditations, associations, publications, etc. in your About Us page

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

Core Team

Are you searching for cost-effective ways to sell more products online? Then make it easier for your prospects to get to know, like and trust your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with accounting terms it 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 visitors can follow selected staff members on their social pages.

In this page, make sure to outline each employee’s experience, how their skills and knowledge add value or contribute to the success of 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 to prospective new clients

(Add a team profile page. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to create and add an easy-to-maintain simple team members directory to your web site using free WordPress plugins, go here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List For Your WordPress Site

Job Opportunities

This is a listing of career opportunities within your company. It would include training, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. You can include information about new 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, subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Customer reviews and case studies are a great way to show potential clients what it’s like to do business with your organization. By adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients, you are also helping to establish social proof online.

Add a web page with case studies and client reviews

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

We have written a comprehensive article on using testimonials and user reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more about this: Learn How To Improve Your Sales With Highly Effective User Testimonials

Contact Page

A contact page is essential.

Your contact page should provide visitors with the following information about your organization:

  • Business Name
  • Your address
  • Telephone
  • Fax
  • Email
  • Google Map
  • Web address
  • Contact form
  • Name of person to contact
  • Links to social media networks
  • Live Chat/Skype

If your business services several locations you will want to make this clear when showing the address and contact information.

You could also include a few links for commonly-asked questions, useful pages, special offers, support area, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful business marketing tool. Blogs typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like company events, updates, educational information, opinions and discussions, videos, infographics, etc.

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

If you don’t have a website yet, or your existing website is hard to keep updated with new content or not delivering you the results you want, then WordPress can serve as both your business website and blog.

Idea

Something few businesses know about, is that WordPress can become an automated traffic machine that can begin driving a stream of targeted traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation

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

If you would like to learn more about this here: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

Legal Information

As a professional accountant or financial services provider, ensuring that you have a compliant website is important, not just for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaking any laws or regulations in whatever area or location you provide services to.

Adding the following legal pages to your accounting website will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Facebook), and other potential sources of legal threats and inconveniences:

  • Contact Page
  • 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. Go here to learn more about this: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Web Content

In today’s fiercely competitive global economy, the earlier you begin to publish great content on your site, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from competing businesses.

By committing to providing great content with advice and tips, you will get your visitors to share your web pages online and come back for more. This is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

For example, for an accounting business, topics could cover:

  • Explanations of balance sheets
  • Profit & loss statements
  • Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
  • How to present accounts for non-profit activities
  • Business cashflow planning tips
  • Business insurance
  • Protecting revenues
  • Structuring a self-managed retirement fund
  • Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your readers gain a better understanding of your accounting services, such as software accounting, small business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use the same keywords and terminology in your content that your readers will be searching for online.

Important Info

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to 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 Experience

Improving your user experience (often 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 UX.

RSS Feeds – Content Syndication

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can help to improve visitor engagement and UX in several ways.

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

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

  • All of your content updates are in one place
  • Doesn’t rely on email
  • Feeds can be shared online
  • Allows for subscribing
  • An RSS feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
  • Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
  • There are a number of ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using different applications)
  • RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes 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.

To find useful RSS feeds just visit sites of finance-related government departments and respected industry bodies.

Here are some exaples of feeds containing useful information that you may want to consider adding to your accounting site:

Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your accounting website's user experience.

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

Adding Forms And Checklists

Checklists and forms are a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to your audience. Checklists and forms can provide users with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to perform a task. Forms and checklists are great business planning tools.

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

  • How To Set Up A Company
  • Rental Property Worksheet
  • Not-For-Profit Activity Checklist
  • Disclosure Requirements
  • Individual Tax Checklist
  • Capital Gains Tax Checklist
  • Income Tax Variation Forms
Online Tools

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

In part two, we discuss a number of WordPress-based tools you can use in your website that improve search engine optimization, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

How To Build And Grow Your Accounting Website Successfully

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This is the end of part one of this step-by-step article on ways to build your accounting web presence.

Click on this link to continue reading:

Practical Tips

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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum

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Originally published as Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress.