Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress
The digital age has not only revolutionized business worldwide, it has also created significant challenges and opportunities for businesses in the accounting profession.
Online Challenges For Accounting & Financial Firms
Now, more than ever, CPAs must work hard to remain competitive, find new business, and retain current clientele. Not only do they have to become more involved in the communities and industries their business serves, they must also develop an active web presence. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your business online.
As well as investing dollars marketing offline, businesses in the accounting industry are now also finding that they need to delegate a more significant part of their budget towards the development and management of a website that drives new prospective clients, engages visitors, outranks the competition in search engines and social media, and helps to create a wider marketing exposure online.
This means that your website not only has to look great, load fast, 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 in time and sections will need to be updated frequently. This requires implementing sound web and content management strategy.
One other problem that accountants face (as do most businesses for that matter), is that your site has only about 30 seconds to help visitors find what they are searching for or they will go elsewhere to get their needs met.
“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 Digital Economy
As well as facing a number of significant challenges, there are also loads of online opportunities available to businesses in the accounting industry that are willing to adapt to meet the demands of the online economy and who can think strategically when it comes to improving their online marketing skills.
The article below will help you uncover ways and opportunities to attract new visitors 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 website, we also emphasize the benefits and advantages of using WordPress to power your accounting website.
To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System (CMS), go here:
Practical Tips To Improve Your Website
Let’s start by going over some basic stuff. In this section, we’ll look at ways to improve your accounting website and get better results. We will look at what web pages you need, what content you need, layout and navigation structure, etc.
If you need additional information about website planning, read this detailed guide we have written: Planning A Website - A Cost-Saving Guide For Business Owners
Your Web Pages
All websites need some basic pages. Let’s discuss the pages your need to have and how to set up your website for best results.
Services
It’s essential to include a page that describes your products and services.
This page should include services such as:
- Business – business planning, incorporation of companies, accounting, payroll, financial statement compilation, book keeping, budgeting, financing, forecasting, strategic planning, consulting services, 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
List all of the services you provide. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your services and why they should choose you.
About Us
This page needs to describe your business and what your business stands for, its unique approach, causes supported, etc.
Remember to list any professional awards, certifications, accreditations, recognitions, publications, associations, etc., that you can use to promote your company and position it above your competitors.
(List all of your awards recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc. in your About page. Image sourced from: deloitte.com)
Staff
Are you searching for quicker and easier ideas to sell more products or services online or increase user interaction on your site? Then make it easier for prospective clients to get to know, like and trust you and your organization better.
You want potential clients to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your team members. It should include a photo and a brief bio. Since most visitors are probably not that well-versed in accounting terms it should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. It should also include social buttons so your visitors can follow selected team members on their social pages.
In this page, make sure to outline your person’s expertise, how they add value or contribute to the success of your team, and more importantly, how they can help add value to your clients’ business.
(Make sure to add a team profile page. Image sourced from: deepsky.com)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to create and add an easy-to-manage list directory of employees in your site using free plugins, go here: How To Easily Add An Employee List Directory
Job Opportunities Page
List any career opportunities available within your organization. It can include training, benefits, professional development, social activities encouraged or sponsored by your firm, etc. You can also include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services 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, join your newsletter, follow you on social media, etc.
Case Studies
Reviews from clients and case studies are a great way to show prospective clients them minimize tax, increase profitability, or grow strategically. By adding a page with case studies and client reviews, you are also helping to provide potential clients with social proof online.
(Add a web page with reviews from clients and case studies. Screenshot image sourced from: pcg-services.com)
If you want to learn more about using client testimonials and reviews, refer to this article: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online With Standout User Testimonials
Contact Page
A contact page is absolutely necessary.
It should include some or all of the following information about your company:
- Name Of Your Organization
- Address of premises
- Telephone
- Fax
- Contact email
- Map and directions
- Web URL
- Contact form
- Contact name
- Links to social media networks
- Live chat (optional feature)
If you operate out of several areas you want to make that clear when displaying the address and contact info.
You can also include a few links for commonly-asked questions, main pages, special offers, helpdesk, newsletter, blog, etc.
Blog Section
A blog is a powerful marketing tool for your business. Blogs are built around a content management system that is simple to use and allows you to easily promote your business using timely content like industry announcements, product updates, educational articles and tutorials, opinions on current topics, videos, media presentations, etc.
If you already have an established site, then consider adding a WordPress blog to promote your company.
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 serve both as your business website and business blog.
Something few people know about, is that an expertly configured WordPress site can become an automated traffic-generation machine that can instantly begin attracting targeted visitors to your website, simply by publishing regular content to your site.
(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)
You can learn more about this here: Web Site Traffic Blueprint – Discover How To Turn Your WordPress Web Site Into A Traffic Machine
Legal Information Pages
It’s important for accounting organizations to ensure they have a compliant website, not just for building trust and credibility with prospective clients, but also to ensure that no laws or regulations are being contravened wherever you service clients.
Adding 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. Facebook), and other potential legal threats and 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
- etc.
Go here if you want to learn more adding legal pages to your site: How To Add Legal Pages To Your Site
Ways To Improve Your Content
In today’s globally competitive economy, the earlier you begin to publish great content on your site, the sooner you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.
Providing great content with useful advice and tips will get your visitors to share your content and come back for more information. Content marketing is the most effective way to inform and teach site visitors and prospective clients about your business and about using your products and services.
For example, topics for an accounting business can include:
- How balance sheets work
- Profit and loss statements
- Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
- Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
- Cashflow planning tips
- Maximizing business insurance cover
- Risk protection
- Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
- Things to look for when … (e.g. purchasing insurance, 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 accounting services, such as forensic accounting, small business accounting, tax planning for small business, reducing debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.
Remember to use specific keywords and terminology in your articles that readers would search for online.
We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information that will teach exactly how to drive more traffic to your website, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to your visitors and grow your business online using content marketing. It’s not only a great course with loads of useful information, it’s also 100% FREE!
Ways Of Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience
Improving your user experience (known as UX) helps keep visitors coming back and engaging with your site. This section will show you ways you can improve visitor engagement and UX.
RSS Feeds – Content Syndication
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds provide plenty of benefits for your accounting business.
If you provide information that adds value to others, other sites will want to syndicate your content.
Some of the benefits of syndicating your content to other websites using RSS feeds, include:
- All of your updates are in one place
- Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
- Your feed can be shared and picked up by other sites online
- Users can subscribe to your feed
- It provides links to your content
- RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories
- RSS provides various ways for readers to receive your content (e.g. users can read the content on their mobile device using feed readers)
- RSS is built into WordPress
There are also a number of benefits to providing content on your website from other websites, 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 and industry bodies.
Below we have listed some exaples of RSS 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
(RSS feeds can help to improve your accounting website’s UX.)
Checklists & Forms
Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to increase user engagement and add value to your visitors. They can provide visitors with useful step-by-step instructions and resources to get necessary tasks completed. They are great business planning tools.
Forms and checklists could include topics such as:
- How To Set Up A Company
- Rental Property Checklist
- Not-For-Profit Activity Checklist
- Disclosure Checklists
- Partnership Tax Checklist
- Trust Tax Checklist
- Income Tax Variation Forms
Adding Online Tools
Providing useful tools and applications for businesses on your website is a great way to increase visitor engagement and add value to users. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are great tools you can add to accounting websites. Other applications would include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.
In part two of this guide, we discuss a several online tools you can use in your accounting website using WordPress plugins that can help improve your seo, improve user engagement and generate more traffic to your business.
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