Grow Your Accounting Business Online With WordPress

Accounting professionals today face increasingly difficult challenges created by the online economy.

Online Challenges For Accounting & Financial Businesses

Today, more than ever, CPAs must work harder to remain competitive, find new clients, and retain current clientele. Not only do you have to become more involved in the communities and industries your business serves, you must also maintain a strong presence online. This includes having an effective web presence and learning how to better promote your business services online.

In addition to investing money in offline marketing, you will probably find that in order to compete with other accounting businesses, increasingly larger amounts of their budget need to be allocated towards developing and managing a website that attracts new clients, engages users, outperforms the competition in search engines and gives you wider marketing exposure online.

This means that your website not only has to look great, your web pages have to load fast, and be easy to navigate, but it’s also important to keep in mind that the needs of your website may change in time and sections may need to be updated often. This requires the implementation of a sound website and content management strategy.

Another difficult challenge that accounting firms face with their websites (as do other professions for that matter), is that they have only around 30 seconds to help users find what they need or they will go 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 Accountants In The Online Economy

As well as facing many challenges, there are also plenty of online opportunities available for businesses in the accounting sector that are willing to adapt to meet online economy challenges and can think strategically in terms of improving their online business marketing skills.

The guide below will help you uncover a number of ways to increase web traffic and establish stronger online credibility for your business.

As well as providing general website improvement tips, we also focus on the benefits and advantages of using the WordPress Content Management System to power your accounting website or blog.

To learn more about the benefits and advantages of using WordPress, see the articles below:

• Why A Poorly Designed Website Can Cost You Customers
• How To Grow Your Business With WordPress

Useful Tips For Improving Your Website

In this section we’ll show you how to improve your website and get better results. We show you what pages your website needs, what content you need, tips for improving navigation structure, etc.

If you need help with website planning, go here: A Basic Guide To Web Site Planning For Business Owners

Basic Pages

All websites require several essential pages. Let’s take a look at the pages your  need and how to structure your accounting website for best results.

Products And Services Page

You need a page that describes your services and products.

This page will include all the services you offer, such as:

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

Make sure to list all of the services you provide. Provide your visitors with information that will educate them about the benefits of using your services 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 your business stands for, its unique approach, supported community programs, etc.

It’s important to also mention any awards, recognitions, accreditations, certifications, associations, publications, etc., that could be used to promote the company and position it above your competitors.

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

Team Profile

Are you looking for quicker, easier and cheaper ways to grow your business online? Then something you can do, is help prospective clients get to know, like and trust you, your team and your organization better.

You want prospective clients to relate to your business. One great way to do that is to have a page that introduces your employees or team members. This page should include a photo and a mini bio. Since most visitors won’t be well-versed in accounting terms your descriptions should tell who they are and what their specialties are. It should also explain what those specialties mean. This page should also include social buttons that will allow your prospective clients to follow selected staff members on their social pages.

On this page, don’t be afraid to humanize your people with personal stories, hobbies, etc., but make sure to outline each staff member’s experience, why they are an invaluable asset to your team, and more importantly, how they will help add value to your clients’ business.

(Make sure to add an employee description page. Screenshot image sourced from: deepsky.com)

For a detailed tutorial on how to create and add an updatable simple team members directory to your site with no coding skills required, go here: How To Easily Create A Simple Staff List For Your WordPress Site With No Coding Skills Required

Work For Us

This is a listing of career opportunities available within your organization. It can include type of training provided, employee benefits, advancement opportunities, etc. It should include information such as the job outlook and upcoming career opportunities in the accounting and financial services industry.

Also include a positions available section in your page. If there are no positions currently available, consider inviting people to return periodically to the page, join your updates list, follow you on social media, etc.

Case Studies

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

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

We have created a detailed article on using testimonials, case studies and reviews get better results online here: Learn How To Achieve Better Results Online With Knockout Testimonials

Contact Us Page

Having a clean contact page is crucial.

Your contact page should include:

• Company Name
• Your address
• Phone
• Facsimile
• Contact email
• Google Map and directions
• Website URL
• Contact form
• Name of person to contact
• Links to social media pages
• Live chat

If you operate out of several locations you will want to make this clear when displaying your address and contact info.

You could also include links to the most commonly asked questions, main pages, special offers, support area, newsletter, blog, etc.

Blog

A blog is a powerful marketing tool. Most blogging platforms typically include a content management system that allows you to promote your business using timely content such as company events, company updates, educational articles, opinions and discussions, promotional videos, infographics, etc.

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

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

Very few people know that WordPress can turn your web presence into an automated traffic-generation machine that can help drive a stream of targeted visitors to your site, simply by adding regular content to your website.

(An expertly configured WordPress site can automate your traffic generation)

For more details: Website Traffic Blueprint – A Complete Guide To Driving More Website Visitors For Your Business Automatically

Legal Information Pages

Having a compliant website is crucial, not just for building trust and credibility with visitors, but also to ensure that you are not breaching laws or regulations in whichever location you provide services to.

Adding some or all of the legal pages below 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 or inconveniences:

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

Go here for a detailed article on adding legal pages to your site: Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your Site

Improve Your Content

In today’s globally competitive economy, the earlier you begin to engage in the practice of content marketing, the faster you will begin to see results and differentiate yourself from the competition.

Providing great content with information and tips will get your visitors sharing your web pages and coming back for more information. Publishing content is a great way to inform and educate your visitors and prospects about your business and about using your products and services.

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

• Explanations of balance sheets
• Overlooked tax deductions
• Duties and legal responsibilities of company directors
• Presenting accounts for non-profit activities
• Cashflow planning
• Maximizing business insurance cover
• Protecting revenues
• Structuring your self-managed retirement fund
• Dos and don’ts of … (e.g. purchasing insurance, claiming business expenses, etc.)

You can also create a series of informative articles that will help your your readers gain a better understanding of your accounting services, such as software accounting, business accounting, business budgeting, reducing business debt, financial concepts made simple, etc.

Remember to include keywords in your articles that readers will be searching for online.

We recommend subscribing to our Content Marketing Email Training Series. You will receive regular training emails with easy-to-digest information and practical tips that will show you how to drive more traffic to your website or blog, save money creating high-quality content that will add value to 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!

Tips For Improving Visitor Engagement And User Experience

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

Use RSS Feeds

Adding RSS feeds can help to improve your visitor engagement and user experience in many ways.

If you provide valuable content, other businesses will 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 in one place
• Content distribution doesn’t rely on email
• Your feed can be shared
• Users can subscribe to your feed
• An RSS feed provides a way for external links to point back to your content
• RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS directories and aggregators
• There are multiple ways your readers can 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 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.

You can find RSS feeds with loads of useful content for your website by visiting sites of finance-related government departments or well-known industry bodies.

Here are some RSS feeds you may want to consider adding 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

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

Adding Forms

Adding checklists and forms to your site is a fantastic way to help increase visitor engagement and add value to your readers. They can provide visitors with useful instructions and resources to perform necessary tasks. Forms and checklists are also great planning tools.

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

• How To Set Up A Business
• Negative Gearing Checklist
• Fundraising Governance Checklist
• Disclosure Checklists
• Company Tax Checklist
• Capital Gains Tax Checklist
• Income Tax Variation Forms

Add Unique Tools

Providing useful online tools, gadgets and applications for businesses on your website can help increase visitor engagement and add value to your target audience. Calculators, such as loan and tax calculators, are useful tools for accounting websites. Other tools could include time cards, or retirement and interest calculators.

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

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This is the end of part 1 of this article on ways to build your accounting web presence.

To continue, click this link:

• Grow Your Accounting Website – Improving SEO, Increase User Engagement And Generate More Visitors To Your Site Using Plugins & Themes

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