Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

The digital economy has not only revolutionized the way business is done globally, it has also created significant challenges and great opportunities for certified public accountants.

Challenges Professional Accountants Face Online

Now, more than ever, accounting firms must find smarter ways to remain competitive, find new business, and keep their current business. Not only do they have to become more involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having a dynamic web presence and learning how to better promote your business services online.

In addition to spending money in offline marketing activities such as advertising on newspapers, ads in industry publications and magazines, radio and television, etc., you will probably find that in order to compete with other accounting businesses, increasingly larger amounts of their budget will need to be assigned towards the development and maintenance of a website that will bring in clients, engage users, outrank the competition in search engines and social media, and give your business wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your site not only has to look professional, your pages have to be fast-loading, and your site has to be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change in time and some aspects will need to be frequently updated. This requires implementing sound website and content management strategy.

One other difficult challenge that accounting organizations face with their websites, as do other businesses for that matter, is that your site has only around 30 seconds or less to give visitors what they need or they will go elsewhere to find what they need.

“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 significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting sector that are willing to evolve to meet the challenges of the digital economy and can think outside the box when it comes to marketing their business services better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn new ways to increase web traffic and build more online credibility for your business.

As well as providing practical tips and information on cost-effective ways to improve your accounting business online, we also recommend that you consider using the WordPress content management system to power your accounting or financial services business website or blog.

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

• Discover How A Poorly Designed Website Can Lose You Customers
• WordPress In Small Business – The Complete Guide To Growing A Small Business Using A WordPress Site

Practical Tips For Improving Your Accounting Or Financial Services Site

In this section we’ll start with the basics and show you how to improve your accounting website and get better results. We show you what web pages you need, what content works best for accounting websites, useful tips for improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need website planning assistance, go here: A Practical Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Your Web Pages

Professional websites require a number of basic web pages. Let’s discuss the pages your  need and how to structure your accounting or financial services website for best results.

Services Description Page

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

Your page should include services such as:

• Business – planning, company structures, accounting, payroll, preparing financial statements, bookkeeping, financing, budgeting, forecasting, 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 a business, 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 your services and why they should book an appointment.

About Us Page

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

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

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

Staff Page

If you are searching for simple ideas to grow your business online, then one of the things you can do, is help your prospective clients get to know your business better.

Prospects need to relate to your business. A great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees. This page should include a photo and a mini biography. Since most visitors will not tend to be familiar with 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 so your prospective clients can follow some of your staff members on their social networks.

In this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to highlight your staff member’s experience, how their skills add value to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Add an employee page. Screenshot source: deepsky.com)

To learn more about how to create and add a list directory of staff members in a WordPress site using free plugins, go here: Adding A Staff List Directory

Career Opportunities Page

This is a listing of career opportunities within the organization. This page can include training offered, benefits, opportunities for advancement, social activities promoted by your firm, etc. You can include stories of graduates who have risen within your company and information such as the job outlook and new 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 announcements list, follow your social pages, etc.

Case Studies And Testimonials

Testimonials from past clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients what it’s like to do business with your organization. Adding a web page with testimonials and case studies also provides prospective clients with social proof online.

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

We have written a comprehensive article on using testimonials and client reviews improve your business online. To learn more about this go here: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online With Meaningful Customer Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a contact page is crucial.

It should include some or all of the following:

• Company Name
• Address of office
• Phone number
• Facsimile
• Email address
• Google Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media pages
• Interactive chat

If you have multiple areas you want to make that clear when showing the address and contact info.

Consider also including a few links for commonly-asked questions, frequently-visited pages, special offers, support page, newsletter opt-in form, blog, etc.

Add An Accounting Or Financial Services Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Many blogging platforms typically comprise of a content management system that is easy to use and allows you to promote your business using content such as news and events, product releases, training articles and tutorials, opinions and discussions, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

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

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

Very few businesses know that an expertly configured WordPress site can turn your web presence into an automated traffic machine that will help begin attracting targeted visitors to your site, simply by adding regular content to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can drive new visitors automatically to your website)

For more details: WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Automatically Attract More Web Visitors For Your Business Using WordPress

Legal Pages

Having a compliant website is extremely important, not just for building trust with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws and regulations are being contravened wherever you service clients.

Depending on what products and services you provide, adding some or all of the legal pages below to your accounting site will help keep you out of legal hot water with most regulatory authorities, third-party service providers (e.g. Google), and other potential sources of threats and legal inconveniences:

• Contact Us
• Privacy Statement
• Terms And Conditions Of Use
• Website Disclaimer
• Affiliate Agreement
• Anti-Spam Policy
• Compensation Disclosure
• DMCA Notice
• Earnings Disclaimer
• External Linking Policy
• Health/Financial Disclaimers
• Refund Policy
• Video/Audio Terms
• etc.

We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site. Go here to learn more: Adding Legal Pages To Your Website

Tips On How To Improve The Content On Your Site

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

By committing to providing great content with useful advice and tips, you will get your readers sharing your web pages with others online and coming back for more. Content marketing is the most effective way to educate your visitors and prospective clients about your business.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning tips
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Risk prevention
• How to structure your 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 educational articles that will help your your prospective clients gain a better understanding of your services, such as forensic accounting, small business accounting, tips on using small business accounting software, reducing debt, understanding accounting concepts, etc.

Remember to use relevant keywords and terms in your articles that readers 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 and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your web site, 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!

Improve Visitor Experience

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

Adding RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and UX in several ways.

If you provide useful content, other businesses may want to syndicate your content to their visitors.

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

• All of your updates are kept in one place
• your content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• RSS feeds can be shared online
• Allows for subscribing
• A feed provides a way for links to point back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
• RSS provides several ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. subscribers can read your content on their mobile device using different applications)
• It’s built into WordPress

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

To find RSS feeds with useful content for your website, visit sites of finance and tax-related government departments or respected industry bodies.

Below we have listed some exaples of RSS 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

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

Checklists And Forms

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

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Worksheet
• Not-For-Profit Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Individual Tax Checklist
• Trust Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Online Tools

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

In part two of this guide, we will look at a several WordPress-based tools you can add to your website that can help to improve your seo, increase user engagement and drive more web traffic to your business.

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This is the end of part 1.

To view the rest of this article, click here:

• Tips For CPAs – WordPress Plugins That Improve Search Engine Optimization, Improve User Engagement And Increase Web Traffic Generation

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