5 Fundamentals of Successful Prospecting by Utilizing Websites For Accountants – Search engine optimization.

Inbound lead generation – attracting potential new clients from a website – is as important in the accounting business as for any and all others.

Well designed websites for accountants should be designed to create as many new leads as they possibly can. Check out the five tricks that assist websites for accountants with attracting new clients for all CPA firms.

Ensure Websites for Accountants Are Well Designed

A well-designed website is very important in inbound lead generation. The website must be simple to navigate so visitors can easily locate the necessary information.

When procuring the services of a designer, ask to see all his or her designs. And be certain you don’t have to sign a contract before viewing the designer’s portfolio.

Remember that if your site displays interesting and compelling content, readers will be far more likely to sign up for your newsletter. Make sure your contact forms are easy to fill out, too. Make the registration simple; ask only for the name of the subscriber and their email address so the form is easy and quick to complete.

Populate Your Website with Content

Your website should contain a large amount of useful content. Note that the servers hosting websites for accountants must be robust enough to handle very large websites.

And don’t forget to arrange your content in a meaningful and intuitive way so readers can easily jump from topic to topic.

Refresh your content on a regular basis. Offer an alert function so that visitors can tell you what sort of information update they would like. In this way, the subscriber has more buy-in to your site.

Email Accounts, Newsletters, and Other Tools Are a Big Draw

Offer some of your tools for no charge. This will increase your inbound lead generation and also enables you to net new clients who find your services superior.

Take a look at the tools you ought to provide:

- Email newsletter

- News updates

- Tax organizers that can be individually customized

- Client portals for secure online exchange of financial materials

Again, these are just some of the tools you can offer. Others are weather reports, an investment ticker, white papers – anything that attracts your clientele. You’re limited only by your imagination!

Don’t Ignore Online Marketing

You want your web designer – the person who sets up your site – to understand internet marketing as well. This is important: a website is a live sales tool that should generate leads, and your web designer must set up your site with this in mind.

Additionally, your web designer should completely understand:

- SEO or Search Engine Optimization

- SEM or Search Engine Marketing

- Keyword placement and how to use keywords

- Placement of anchor text

Effective SEM and SEO raise the position of your site above other websites for accountants in the search engine results pages. This is because SEO and SEM help search engines – Google, Yahoo, and Bing – determine how relevant your site is.

To determine how relevant your site is for a search, Google, Bing, and Yahoo look at your site’s keywords and the links from other sites, forums, and blogs (called backlinks). The better the incoming links and keywords, the more popular the search engines perceive your site to be, and the higher they place your website.

Given all this, it’s important your web designer understands SEO and SEM and can use keywords and links to your advantage. Your web designer should make a list of the keywords that attract the most promising leads, as well as which pages to place them on and where on the page to position them. An investment in SEO and SEM will pay impressive dividends – in the form of new prospects – down the road.

Know Your Keywords

When CPAs are finding keywords for their websites for accountants, they need to remember that their intended audience is broken down into different sources. Some visitors will be looking for tax help, some require business accounting, and some need a forensic accountant or medical biller. Also keep in mind local versus national clients, and adjust your keywords accordingly.

Keyword lists should be broken down this way:

- Which services the accountant provides

- Their geographic region

- Their specialties: tax prep, payroll, QuickBooks, etc.

- Tools, such as financial calculators

Keep in mind that keywords should appear not only on your home page, but also on secondary pages. Also, be careful not to stuff too many keywords onto one page, because that severely limits readability. A good rule of thumb is no more than three to five keywords per page of text. Any more than this will make your page too hard to read.

We’ve covered 5 strategies for positively impacting internet marketing for websites for accountants. Stay with it – over time, your efforts will pay off with a nice batch of new clients.