Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants today face significant challenges.

Online Challenges For CPAs

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

As well as investing money advertising offline, you will probably find that in order to compete, you will need to designate a greater part of your marketing budget to developing and maintaining a website that can attract prospective clients, engage visitors, outperform the competition in search engines and help you gain a wider amount of exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look great, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and some areas may need to be updated frequently. This requires the implementation of a well-developed website and content management strategy.

One other problem that accountancy firms face, as all other businesses do for that matter, is that they have only around 30 seconds or less to provide visitors what they are looking 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 Web Economy

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also many online opportunities available to accounting companies that can evolve to meet digital challenges and think progressively when it comes to marketing their business better online.

This guide will help you uncover new opportunities to attract new visitors and improve your business results online.

As well as providing useful website improvement tips, we also recommend that you consider using WordPress to power your accounting or financial services website or blog.

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

• Why A Poorly Constructed Website Can Lose You Business
• The Business Owner’s Guide To Using WordPress

Useful Tips To Improve Your Accounting Site

Let’s start by going over the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your accounting website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what type of content you need, layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, visit this page: The Web Site Planning Process: A Basic Blueprint For Non-Technical Business Owners

Essential Pages

Professional business websites require a number of basic web pages. Let’s take a look at these.

Products And Services Description Page

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

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

• Business accounting – business planning, company formation, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, forecasting, financing, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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, asset 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 contact or appointment booking page.

About Us Page

This page should give a description of your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, philanthropical donations, etc.

Remember to also mention any awards, certifications, recognitions, accreditations, publications, associations, etc., that can be used to promote your company and position it above your competitors.

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

Meet The Team

Are you looking for quicker and simpler ideas to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is help your prospective clients get to know your organization better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in 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 also include social buttons so your site visitors can follow your team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to outline your staff member’s experience, how they contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can 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 add a directory of employees or team members in your website without editing code here: Adding An Employee List Directory

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities available within the company. It would include training, benefits, opportunities for advancement, etc. It should include case studies of graduates who have risen within your company and information about career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Maintain a positions available section in your 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.

Case Studies

Case studies and testimonials are a great way to show potential clients the benefits of doing business with your organization. By adding a page with case studies and testimonials from past clients, you will also help to provide prospective clients with social proof online.

(Add a page to your site with client reviews and case studies. Screenshot image source: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively on using case studies, testimonials and user reviews get better results online. Go here to learn more: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online With Standout Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is absolutely necessary.

It should provide visitors with the following information:

• Company Name
• Physical location
• Telephone
• Fax
• Email
• Google Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Interactive chat feature (optional)

If your business operates out of different areas you should make that clear when displaying the address and contact information.

You could also include links to an FAQ page, frequently-visited pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog is a very powerful business marketing tool. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business by publishing content like industry news, updates, useful articles, discussions on current topics, promotional videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Very few businesses know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that will help begin delivering new targeted traffic to your web site, simply by adding regular content to your site.

(WordPress can drive new traffic automatically to your website)

Go here to learn more about this: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – How To Automatically Get More Website Traffic For Your Business

Legal Information Pages

It’s crucially important for accounting companies to have a compliant website, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being contravened wherever you provide services to.

Depending on what services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting or financial services 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 Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

We have written a detailed article about adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more: How To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improve Your Content

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

Providing great content with advice and tips will get your readers sharing your content and coming back for more information. Publishing content is the most effective way to inform and educate site visitors and prospective clients about your business.

For example, for an accounting or financial services business, topics can cover:

• How balance sheets work
• Understanding profit and loss statements
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Risk protection
• How to structure your 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 services, such as software accounting, business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, understanding accounting concepts, etc.

Remember to use relevant keywords in your articles that your prospective clients would search for.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive a comprehensive series of training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach 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 marketing strategies. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Experience

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

Using RSS Feeds

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

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

Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other businesses using RSS feeds, include:

• All of your content updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared online
• Feeds allow for subscribing
• A feed provides links to your content
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are a number of ways readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can view your 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.

You can find many useful RSS feeds by visiting sites of relevant government departments or industry bodies.

Below we have listed some useful RSS feeds you could consider adding to your site:

• 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

(RSS feeds can help to improve your accounting site’s UX.)

Checklists & Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a great way to increase user engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. They can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. They can also be great planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Company
• Rental Property Checklist
• Fundraising Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website can help increase visitor engagement and significantly add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are popular tools for accounting websites. Others would include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section of this detailed guide, we will look at a several online tools you can use in your site using WordPress plugins that improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one of this guide on ways to build your accounting business presence online.

To continue, click here:

• Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins For Improving SEO, Better User Engagement And Generating More Visitors

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