Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The information economy has not only revolutionised the way business is done globally, it has also created a growing number of challenges and great opportunities for accounting businesses.

Challenges Certified Public Accountants Face Online

Accountants today must work harder than ever before to remain competitive. Not only do you have to maintain an active presence in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also maintain an active presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your business online.

In addition to investing dollars in offline marketing activities such as advertising on local newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and tv spots, etc., businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that increasingly larger amounts of their marketing budget need to be assigned towards the development and management of a website that drives new clients, engages visitors, outperforms the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to give their business a wider marketing reach online.

This means that your website not only has to look professional, your web pages have to be fast-loading, and your website 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 may need to be updated often. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that accountancy firms face online (and other businesses for that matter), is that they have an average of 30 seconds or less to provide visitors what they are looking for or they will leave your site and 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

Online Opportunities For Professional Accountants

As well as facing a number of significant business and technology changes, there are also many online opportunities available for accounting firms that are willing to evolve to meet digital economy demands and can think outside the box in terms of marketing their business better online.

This comprehensive guide will help you uncover a number of ways to drive more web traffic and build more online credibility for your accounting or financial services business.

As well as providing practical tips and information on ways to improve your accounting website, we also place special emphasis on the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting website or blog.

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

• Why A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Prospective Customers
• Using A WordPress Site To Grow Your Small Business Online

Useful Tips For Improving Your Accounting Site

Let’s start by going over some basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results. We will look at what pages your website needs, what type of content works best for accounting and financial services websites, your layout and navigation, etc.

If you need assistance or help planning your accounting or financial services website, read this article: Planning A Website - A Basic Guide For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

All websites require a number of basic pages. Let’s review these.

Products And Services Page

You need to include a page that describes your services and any products that you offer.

It should include all the services you offer, such as:

• Business – business planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, forecasting, budgeting, financing, 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

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and why they should choose you.

About Us Page

The ‘About Us’ page should give a description of your business and explain to visitors what it stands for, its unique approach, supported community projects, etc.

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

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

Team

Are you searching for simple ideas to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is help prospects get to know your organization better.

People need to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your staff. It should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors are probably not familiar with accounting terms your descriptions 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 that will allow your site visitors to follow individual team members on their social pages.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your team members with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each employee’s expertise and qualifications, why they are an asset to your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add a page that introduces your team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily create and add an easy-to-manage simple team members directory in your site with no coding skills required, go here: How To Add A Staff Directory: WordPress Plugin Tutorial

Recruitment Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within your organization. This page should include training offered, benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include stories of graduates who have risen within your firm and information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the accounting industry.

Maintain 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 updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Testimonials

Testimonials and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients minimise tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. Adding a web page with case studies and client reviews also helps your accounting site to provide social proof online.

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

If you want to learn more using case studies, testimonials and reviews get better results online, go here: Learn How To Convert More Visitors Into Prospects With Compelling Testimonials

Contact Page

A contact page is essential.

It should provide some or all of the following information about your organization:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your physical location
• Telephone number
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Map
• Web address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media URLs
• Chat

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

Consider also including links to the most commonly asked questions, useful pages, special offers, support page, newsletter, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog Section

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs typically include a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content such as announcements, company updates, training articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

You probably don’t know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that will help begin to deliver web traffic to your site, simply by publishing regular content to your site.

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

Go here to learn more about this: Web Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your WordPress Site Into An Automated Web Traffic Machine

Legal Info Pages

It’s vital for accounting companies to make sure they have a compliant website, not just for building credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that you are not breaching local, regional and federal laws or regulations wherever you service clients.

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

To learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Website

How To Improve Your Web Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, content marketing has become one of the key success differentiators for businesses.

By committing to providing great content with advice and tips, you will get your readers sharing your web pages and coming back for more information. This is the most effective way to inform and teach your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• How balance sheets work
• Understanding profit & loss statements
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• How to structure a self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers understand your services, such as finance accounting, small business accounting, business budgeting, reducing debt, understanding accounting concepts, etc.

Remember to include the same keywords and terminology in your content that prospective clients will be searching 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 and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content for your site 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!

Tips For Improving Visitor Experience

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

Using RSS Feeds

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

If you provide content that adds value to others, other sites may 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
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Feeds can be shared online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• An RSS feed provides links back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• There are multiple ways your readers can receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• RSS is 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.

To find RSS feeds with useful content just search online for finance-related government departments and key industry bodies.

For example, here are a few 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

(Add RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to improve your website’s UX.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to increase visitor engagement, add value to your audience and set yourself apart from the competition. Forms and checklists can give them step-by-step instructions and resources to complete necessary tasks. Forms and checklists are also great business planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Worksheet
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Other Tools

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

In the next section of this guide, we discuss a number of online tools you can use in your website using WordPress plugins that can help improve seo, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click here to keep reading:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Drive More Traffic

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