Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital business age has not only transformed the way business is done around the world, it has also created a number of challenges and great opportunities for businesses in the accountancy industry.

Online Challenges For Accounting Businesses

Accounting businesses must work harder than ever to remain in business. Not only do they have to be fully involved in the communities and industries they serve, they must also maintain an active web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better market your services online.

As well as spending money in offline marketing, businesses in the accounting industry are also finding that they will need to allocate a greater share of their budget to develop and maintain a website that attracts new prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and increases their marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, and your site layout has to be easy to navigate, but even more importantly, your site’s needs will change over time and many aspects may need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that CPAs (and other professions) face, is that you have an average of 30 seconds to help visitors find the information 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

Opportunities For Professional Accountants

As well as facing a number of challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting sector that are willing to evolve to meet online economy demands and think outside the box when it comes to marketing their services better online.

This guide will help you uncover new opportunities to increase web traffic and create significant improvements in your business results online.

As well as providing tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your website, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system (CMS), see these articles:

• How A Poorly Built Website Can Cost You Customers And What To Do About It
• WordPress In Business – A Complete Guide To Growing Your Business With A WordPress Site

How To Improve Your Website

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

If you need specific help with website planning, see this article: Planning Your Web Site - A Money-Saving Primer For Business Owners

Your Web Pages

All business websites require several essential pages. Let’s go over the pages your  should have and how to structure your accounting or financial services website for best results.

Your Products And Services

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

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

• Business – business planning, formation, general accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, book keeping, budgeting, forecasting, financing, strategic planning, consulting, etc.
• Taxation – preparation, planning, reviewing, auditing, advising, 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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about what these services do and direct them to your contact or appointment booking page.

Who We Are

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

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

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

Your Team

If you are searching for cost-effective ways to grow your business online and get people to stay longer on your site, then help your visitors get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

You want your business to be relatable. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team. It should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be well-versed in accounting terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should even include social buttons that will allow your site visitors to follow your team members on their social networks.

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

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

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to create and add a simple and easy-to-maintain list of employees or team members to your site using free plugins, go here: Adding A Staff Directory In WordPress

Career Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities within the firm. This page would include training, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. You should also include stories of trainees who have worked their way up in your organization and information about upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Include also 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.

Case Studies & Testimonials

Client reviews and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what kind of accounting solutions you are capable of implementing to help them solve their problems. Adding a page with case studies and testimonials also helps your accounting site to provide social proof.

(Add a page with testimonials and case studies. Image source: pcg-services.com)

We have written extensively about using case studies, testimonials and user reviews improve your business online. Go here to learn more: Learn How To Improve Your Sales Conversions With Effective Customer Testimonials

Contact Us Page

A clean contact page is absolutely necessary.

It should include the following information:

• Business Name
• Your address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map and directions
• Web address
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Social media URLs
• Chat feature

If your business services several locations you will want to make that clear when showing your address and contact info.

You could also include a few links for the most commonly asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog Section

A blog can be a very powerful marketing tool. Blogs are built around a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like industry news, company updates, educational articles and tutorials, informative posts, videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Something not many people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin driving a stream of web traffic to your business, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – How To Create An Automated Traffic-Getting Machine With WordPress

Legal Info Pages

Having a compliant website is important, not just for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching any local, regional and federal laws or regulations wherever you provide services to.

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

• Contact Page
• Privacy Policy
• Terms And Conditions
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• and others

To learn more about adding legal pages to your website, refer to this article: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

Improving The Content On Your Site

In today’s fiercely competitive digital economy, the earlier you begin engaging in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

By committing to providing great content with useful advice and tips, you will get your visitors sharing your content and coming back for more information. This is the most effective way to inform and educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your products and services.

For example, topics for an accounting business can include the following:

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• How to present accounts for fundraising activities
• Cashflow planning tips
• Business insurance
• Risk protection
• Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your readers understand your services, such as finance accounting, tax accounting, business auditing, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to use relevant keywords and terms in your content that readers 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 exactly how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality 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 100% FREE!

Improve Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Content Syndication – RSS Feeds

An RSS feed provides many benefits for your business.

If you provide valuable information, other sites may want to syndicate your content.

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
• Doesn’t rely on email
• Your feeds can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for your readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
• RSS is 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.

To find useful RSS feeds just search online for relevant government departments and industry bodies.

For example, here are some exaples of useful RSS feeds you may want to consider adding 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

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

Adding Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase user engagement and add value to your audience. Forms and checklists can provide useful instructions and resources to perform tasks. They can also be great business planning tools.

You can provide checklists and forms (or links to these) covering a range of areas such as:

• How To Set Up A Company
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Requirements
• Company Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Other Tools

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

In the next section, we look at a several WordPress plugins and themes you can add to your website that can improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this article on ways to improve your accounting web presence.

To continue, click here:

• A Complete Step-By-Step Guide To Successfully Building And Growing Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website – Part 2

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