Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The web economy has not only revolutionised businesses around the world, it has also created new challenges and opportunities for certified public accountants.

Online Challenges For Accounting And Financial Businesses

Accounting businesses today must work harder than ever 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 a strong digital presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning better ways to promote your business services online.

As well as spending money advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to remain competitive, you will need to delegate a more significant share of your marketing budget towards the development and management of a website that will bring in prospects, engage users, outperform the competition in search engines and help you create wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your 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 will change over time and sections will need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing well-developed web and content management strategy.

Another challenge that accounting businesses face with their websites (as do all other businesses for that matter), is that your site has around thirty seconds to provide visitors with what 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

Opportunities For Accountants

As well as facing many challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that are willing to evolve to meet digital economy challenges and can think strategically when it comes to marketing themselves better online.

In this article, you will discover new ways to increase web traffic and create significant improvements in your accounting and financial business presence online.

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

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

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Lose You Money And What To Do About It
• Learn How To Grow Your Business Using WordPress

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Site

We’ll start first by going over some basics. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your website and get better results. We show you what web pages you need, what content works best, ways to improve your site’s layout and navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, check out the detailed step-by-step guide we have written here: How To Plan Your Business Website: A Basic Primer For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Website Pages

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

Services Description Page

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

It will include services such as:

• Business – business planning, company formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, budgeting, financing, 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, asset transfers, etc.
• Lending and leasing

List all of the services you provide, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about what your services do and why they should book an appointment.

About Us Page

This page should give a description of your business and what it stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.

It should also mention any awards, accreditations, recognitions, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that you can use to promote your company and set it above other competitors.

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

Staff

If you are looking for cost-effective ideas to sell more products online, then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for your prospective clients to get to know, like and trust you, your team and your business better.

You want your business to be relatable. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page 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. You may also want to explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons that will allow your visitors to follow individual team members on their social pages.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each employee’s experience, how their skills add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add a page that introduces your employees or team members to prospective new clients. Screenshot source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily add an easy-to-manage simple staff directory in your site using a free WP plugin, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Add A Staff List Directory To Your WordPress Site

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within the organization. This page would include training offered, benefits, advancement opportunities, social activities sponsored by your firm, etc. You should also include stories of trainees who have risen within your organization and information about new 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 this page, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what type of financial solutions you can implement to help them solve their problems. By adding a page with case studies and reviews from clients, you will also help to establish social proof.

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

We have written extensively on using client case studies and reviews improve your business online. Go here to learn more about this: How To Achieve Better Results Online Using Knockout Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should provide:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Map
• Website address
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Social media links
• Chat/Skype

If you operate in different areas you should make this 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 A Blog

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Most blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using timely content such as company events, company updates, training information, informative posts, videos, media presentations, etc.

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

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

Not many businesses know this, but an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that can begin driving an ongoing stream of targeted traffic to your website, simply by publishing new content on a consistent basis to your website.

(WordPress can drive web traffic automatically to your site)

For more details: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – How To Turn Your WordPress Website Into A Web Traffic Machine

Legal Information

Having a compliant website is crucially important, not just for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that no local, regional or federal laws or regulations are being contravened wherever your business is located.

Adding some or all of the following legal pages to your site will help you stay 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 Policy
• Terms And Conditions 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 website. Go here to learn more: The Importance Of Adding Legal Pages To Your Site

How To Improve Your Content

In today’s fiercely competitive digital economy, the earlier you begin to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to differentiate yourself from the competition.

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

For example, for an accounting or financial services business, topics could include the following:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• Tips on structuring a self-managed retirement fund
• Do’s and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing vs leasing, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

You can also create a series of educational articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your accounting or financial services, such as finance accounting, tax accounting, business budgeting, 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 regular training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will teach you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating useful content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also completely FREE!

Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds provide many benefits for your accounting business.

If you provide content that adds value to others, 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 online
• Users can subscribe to your RSS feed
• It provides links to your site
• Feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read your content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• It’s built into WordPress

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

You can find many useful RSS feeds for your website by searching online for finance and tax-related government departments or industry bodies.

For example, here are examples of feeds you may want to add to your accounting 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

(Use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to provide your visitors with a better user experience.)

Checklists And Forms

Checklists and forms are a great way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. Forms and checklists can provide step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. They are also great planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Non-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Partnership Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses can help increase visitor engagement and add significant value to your users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are some of the most popular tools for accounting websites. Other applications can include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

In the next section, we will be discussing a number of WordPress-based tools you can add to your website that improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of section one.

Click on this link to continue:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – How To Improve SEO, Improve User Engagement And Increase Visitors To Your Website Generation With Plugins And Themes

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