Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accountants face a number of challenges in today’s digital economy, especially in terms of growing a business presence online.

Challenges Accountants Face Online

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

In addition to investing dollars advertising offline, you will probably find (if you haven’t already) that in order to compete, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be assigned to develop and manage a website that attracts clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to increase your marketing reach online.

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

Another difficult challenge that accountancy firms face with their websites (as all other professions do for that matter), is that your site has only around 30 seconds to give visitors what they are searching for 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 Accounting Businesses In The Online Economy

As well as facing significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that are willing to evolve to meet online economy demands and can think strategically in terms of marketing their services better online.

In this comprehensive guide, you will learn about ways and opportunities to find more potential clients and create significant improvements in your business results online.

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

For more information about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress content management system, see the articles below:

• How A Poorly Built Web Site Can Cost You Money And What To Do About It
• Everything You Need To Know To Grow Your Small Business With WordPress

Tips To Improve Your Accounting Or Financial Services Website

We’ll start first by covering the basic information you need. In this section, we’ll look at how to improve your website and get better results online. We will look at what web pages you need, what content works best for accounting websites, navigation structure, etc.

If you need additional information about website planning, see this detailed step-by-step guide we have written: A Money-Saving Guide To Web Site Planning For Non-Technical Business Owners

Your Web Pages

All business websites need a number of basic web pages. Let’s discuss these.

Services And Products Description Page

You need a page that explains your services or products.

It should include services such as:

• Business – business planning, incorporation of companies, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, bookkeeping, financing, forecasting, budgeting, strategic planning, consulting services, etc.
• Taxation – preparing, 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, not just the ones you specialize in. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using these services and why they should choose you.

Who We Are

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

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

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

Meet Our Team

Are you searching for inexpensive ways to sell more products or services online? Then one of the things you can do, is make it easier for prospects to get to know, like and trust 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. This page should include a photo and a brief biography. 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 visitors to follow selected team members on their social networks.

On this page, make sure to highlight your team member’s 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 employees to prospective new clients. Screenshot source: deepsky.com)

If you need help how to easily create and add a simple and easy-to-maintain list of employees to your website using free WordPress plugins, see this step-by-step tutorial: Plugin Tutorial: How To Add An Employee List Directory To Your Site

Job Opportunities Page

List any career opportunities available within your firm. This page would include training provided, employee benefits, professional development, etc. You can also include information about upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Include also 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 contact list, follow your social pages, etc.

Testimonials

Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show potential clients businesses minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and client reviews, you are also helping to will also be providing social proof.

(Add a web page with case studies and testimonials from previous clients. Image sourced from: pcg-services.com)

We have written a comprehensive article about using testimonials, case studies and user reviews improve your business online. For more details: How To Improve Your Sales With Sales Boosting Testimonials

Contact Page

Having a clean contact page is essential.

It should include the following information about your company:

• Name Of Your Organization
• Your physical address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Contact email address
• Map
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Contact name
• Links to social media pages
• Online chat feature

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

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

Add A Blog

A blog is a very powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that allows you to promote your business by publishing timely content such as company events, updates, training articles, informative posts, videos, webinars, etc.

If you already have an established accounting site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your organization.

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

You may not have been told about this, but WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly attract new visitors to your web site, simply by publishing regular content to your web site.

(WordPress can automate your traffic generation)

Go here to learn more about this: Web Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Getting More Website Visitors Automatically Using WordPress

Legal Info Pages

As a professional accountant, ensuring that you have a compliant website is really important, not just for establishing trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no local, regional and federal laws and regulations are being broken wherever your do business in.

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

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

We have written a comprehensive article on adding legal pages to your website. To learn more, go here: Adding 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 business differentiators.

You want to provide great content with information and tips that will get your readers sharing your web pages and coming back for more. This is a great way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your services.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Directors’ duties and legal responsibilities
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Business cashflow planning advice
• Business insurance
• Protecting revenues
• Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing insurance, setting up payroll systems, etc.)

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

Remember to use the same 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 a comprehensive series of training emails with actionable information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your site, save money creating high-quality content for your site 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!

Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

RSS Feeds

RSS feeds can help to improve 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.

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
• Your feeds can be shared and picked up by other sites online
• RSS feeds allow for subscribing
• It provides links back to your site
• Your feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. read the content on their mobile device using a feed reader)
• RSS is built into WordPress

There are also benefits when it comes to providing information on your site from other websites, such as the fact that you don’t have to write, manage or update the content.

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

For example, here are some feeds containing useful information that 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

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

Add Online Checklists & Forms

Checklists and forms are a fantastic way to increase user engagement, add value to your visitors and set yourself apart from the competition. Checklists and forms can provide visitors with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks performed. Checklists and forms can also be great planning tools.

Forms and checklists could include subjects such as:

• How To Set Up A Business
• Rental Property Checklist
• Not-For-Profit Activity Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Company Tax Checklist
• Self Managed Super Fund Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Online Tools

Providing unique tools, gadgets and applications for businesses (or links to these tools) on your website is a great way to 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 would include time cards, and retirement and interest calculators.

In part two, we discuss a number of online tools you can add to your site using WordPress plugins and themes that can help improve your search engine optimization, increase user engagement and drive more visitors to your business.

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This is the end of part one of this step-by-step guide on ways to improve your accounting web presence.

To continue, click this link:

• How To Build And Grow Your Accounting Business Online – Part 2

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