This is part 2 of a series on using video with your accounting firm’s website. If you haven’t yet you will want to read the first post I wrote on creating video for your accounting firm.

There are literally scores of video sharing sites, and in a perfect world you would want to submit your video to all of them, but that’s going to be WAY too much work. Instead, just submit your video to a few of the more important ones.

These sites are ad driven, so as a rule the more pages they have, the more money they make. They are constantly stealing videos from one one another. Over time your video will just naturally be picked up by more and more sites.

Here are my 5 favorite video sharing sites (in order of importance). Set up accounts with as many of them as you think you can manage.

• youtube.com
• viddler.com
• revver.com
• livevideo.com
• dailymotion.com

This is a section of one of my YouTube profiles. I've circled the backlink. Search Engines love backlinks and each video you upload adds value to this link. Your Accounting Videos all point to this page, which in turn points to your website.

The first step is signing up for user accounts. When setting up your user account, spend a little time on your profile. Make sure you fill it out completely and include a unique and recognizable picture or avatar.

Most importantly, make sure that you enter your website address. All your videos and all of your comments will link back to this page. There is usually an SEO benefit to having your profile page link to your website.

Once your profile page is done it’s time to submit your video. Take your time while you are going through the submission process.

The title of the video is very important. Search engines will actually see this title so make sure you include a relevant keyword or two (or three). The submission form will usually let you list keywords. Searchers on the site use these tags so take the time to fill them out.

There will also be a short description field on the submission form. Some sites will automatically create links out of URLs in the description. Make sure when you enter your description you include a URL to your website and if possible throw in a choice keyword or two.

It's very important to include your URL in your video description. As you can see in the example above YouTube turned it into a backlink for CPA Site Solutions.

Provide as much information and be as thorough as you can. These pages will be up for a long time so it’s worth taking a little extra time to make sure it represents your accounting firm well.

Once your video is uploaded it’s time to drive some traffic to it. Include a link in your email signature. If you have accounts you can also use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to it.

This is a “lather rinse repeat” strategy. Once you’ve uploaded your video it’s time to get the next one started. The more videos you upload the greater the benefit and the more subscribers you are likely to accumulate.

Better yet, providing you choose your page titles effectively Google LOVES video. The more videos you upload the more search slots you are likely to steal from your competitors.

I know… this sounds like a nightmare. You had a hard time thinking of one good topic. How are you supposed to come up with two or three a month?

For the last installment I’ll try to help you out a little with that. We’ll talk a little about some specific topics (enough to keep you busy for a while) and we’ll help you find some easy ways to follow trends that will increase the chances of your videos being viewed.

Have a story of your own about using video? Send us a comment we would love to hear from you.

A Collage of Images from the Team at CPA Site Solutions

Erik on his many crazy adventures

We have expanded our About Us Page here at CPA Site Solutions to include a full bio page on each member of our team. Now instead of just seeing a short paragraph on each person you will be able to view photos and more.

We have added some details to our current about us page that opens a greater window into who we are at CPA Site Solutions. We added a whole slew of pictures and categories to browse through.

These are some of the highlights of the new About Us page. We hope you take the time to visit them all.

David and His Band on YouTube

We are all adventurous in our own right with Erik leading the pack. If you remember Erik is the one who dressed up so brightly for the Fourth of July.

We all have more to show than the short paragraphs of our previous About Us page. Take for example David who has even gone  so far as  to include a YouTube video of him in his band. It is no wonder though since he has just gotten back from a tour in Europe with that same said band.

Brian surfing in Hawaii with his kids.

Our esteemed leader Brian gives a great story about how CPA Site Solutions got started. Wouldn’t be complete though if he didn’t have pictures of his wife and kids who have been a part of the ongoing adventure. Who knew that Brian likes to surf?

There are many different facts you might not know about any of us. Who knew that Jon plays banjo or that there is only one very blurry picture of Dan caught on a security camera in 2002?

Then you might consider the luck that Andy has in getting close to Wally the Green Monster at Fenway. Andy is not shy with including a bit of humor within his bio which seems to be an over-riding theme of everyone and their bio pages.

Barry on one of his many kayaking adventures

There are other adventures included such as pictures of Barry Kayaking or Jeff in Nepal. Of course if your Kyle you might need only to start rocking out in the living room with Guitar Hero to have instant fun.

So take a moment and check out our new profile pages. There are interesting facts about the team that helps to make your accounting firm’s website go.

Of course as with life on the Internet, these pages have a future unknown even to their authors. Check back often to see updates to the humor that each provide.

Have a comment regarding our new profile pages? Send us a comment, we would love to hear what you think.

The genesis of CPA Site Solutions came about in 1998 as Brian O’Connell strived for constant improvement of his current business practices and observed that an opportunity existed to provide web design services to CPAs and accounting firms. Since the founding of  CPA Site Solutions in 1999, the organization has been defined by a continual drive to improve and refine the services we provide our customers.

Submit a Review on CPA Site Solutions Website

This process of constant refinement and improvement results both from keeping up with rapidly changing new technologies and also from our constant interaction with clients and listening to their needs. While we have recently expanded our social networking via Facebook and Twitter, we also know that these new and much hyped technologies cannot supplant ‘old fashioned’ email and phone contact with our customers.

At CPA Site Solutions, our experienced web designers function as account managers and interact with customers on a daily basis. While on the phone each of us takes the time to listen to our clients and keep track of improvements or problems. We gather those notes together in a database and brainstorm improvements and new service offerings.

Client feedback is a vital part of this process:  We solicit reviews directly on the CPA Site Solutions website. These reviews are honest feedback from clients regarding our services and your interactions with us.

Take a moment and read through the reviews our site:  Each tells a story. Take for example Matt Holdsworth who felt like he spent a million dollars on the Holdsworth and Co’s custom website design.

There are a number of similar stories as many are impressed by the over 200 ready to go website designs that CPA Site Solutions offers. We are consistently adding to these each month so that there are always more to choose from.

Then there is Julie Webb who loves the portal and the security offered via the Vault. Many are impressed with the ease of using the Secure File Exchange system and the service it offers their clients.

When you have a moment stop by our website and give us a review letting us know what you think. We are always open to new ideas and continual improvement, a cornerstone of how Brian started CPA Site Solutions in 1999. Send us your comments, we would love to hear from you.

Our web design team at CPA Site Solutions have just completed two new designs and added them to the more than 220 other ready-to-go website designs available for your accounting website.

Style 176291 – Silver

Style 57001 – Silver

Take an up-close look at these new styles by clicking the images above.

As usual, there’s no extra charge to switch your site to one of these, or any of our website designs. Give your site a complete redesign in just minutes and at zero cost by calling us with the site design of your choice and we’ll make that change in just minutes.

Would you rather have a design customized for your area or adjusted to reflect your business or brand?  Just let us know, and we’ll put you in touch with one of our professional designers to build you  a unique and custom website design with CPA Site Solutions.

Remember, we’re always working on new designs for you, so if nothing catches your eye, then just wait. We’ll have another batch of designs for you in the coming weeks. In the meantime, leave us a comment below about these or any of our other site designs.  We love to hear from you.

An easily overlooked and often underestimated element of all websites is the navigation bar.  It shows up on almost every page of your accounting firm’s web site and clients constantly use it to traverse your CPA web site.

A well-formed navbar can be crucial to determining the visitor’s experience, so here are a few tips to make it complement your accounting firm’s website with CPA Site Solutions rather than complicate it.

A cluttered navigation bar is a lot like a cluttered apartment:  unappealing to the eye, difficult to find what you’re looking for, and visitors aren’t going to want to stay for very long. So it is important that you keep your accounting website’s navbar short and simple.

Navigation Bar with the right amount of links.

It may seem like having a link to every page on your site available right on your navbar would make things easier for your clients, but it actually makes things more difficult. A lack of structure and an excessive number of links confuses and frustrates clients and pulls focus away from the pages themselves.

Ideally, your navigation bar shouldn’t have more than 8 initial links.  This number of links on a navbar keeps it from seeming overwhelming and makes it more inviting for people to browse casually.

It also helps to keep the link names concise and generic and leave the specifics for the page itself. “Online Tax Tools for Client Users” is unnecessary when “Tax Tools” serves the same purpose and function.

You can offer more options by making use of sub pages. A main navbar link named “Accounting Services” could break down into several sub pages focusing on different accounting-related features.

This has the dual effect of allowing for more selections without cluttering up the menu and adding structure to the page by grouping like pages together, making it easier to locate specific information.

Example of Sub-Pages

Don’t overdo it with the number of sub pages or you’ll defeat the whole purpose. You are allowed several layers of sub pages, so you can keep breaking down into small sections, i.e. “Services” can have the sub page “Business Services” which can have it’s own set of sub pages. Once again, organized groups will prevent people from being daunted by the number of pages you offer.

For  more on setting up and using your navigation bar, check out the tutorials on CPA Site Solutions help page.

Have any comments regarding the managing of navigation bars? Let us know, we would love to hear from you.

Ping.fm Web Site

Using Social Networks to manage your online image can take some time out of an already busy day but not when you use Ping.fm. If you’re unfamiliar with the use of Social Networks you want to read CPA Site Solutions  previous posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Ping.fm is a simple service that allows anyone with Social Networks to post to all of them at once. This means logging into one place and writing something short that posts to Twitter, Facebook, and any other Social Network you use.

Login to One Web Site. This is the main appeal to Ping.fm because if you have Twitter and Facebook you can post to those two areas without having to login to each. Only one password to remember and website to visit.

Long URL Links Are Automatically Shortened. Some links are longer than can be effectively managed. Ping.fm takes and shortens the URL so that it shows up without taking over a lot of room. This is especially helpful with Twitter since there is a 140 character limit.

Leverage Ping.fm to Get the Word Out. Leverage Ping.fm to get the word out to an audience gained from using Facebook, Twitter and others without sacrificing actual content. Although you may need to keep your post down to 140 characters or less because of Twitter, that is only to gain a readers attention. The actual, or expanded, content is within an Accounting blog or firm’s web page.

It is within a blog or web page that information on a new seminar built on your firm’s website or campaign launch can really occur. If a person is on the blog or web page you have their attention and can more effectively relay more detailed and helpful information.

Using Ping.fm brings together all of the Social Networks under one umbrella. Using Ping.fm now can help to leverage time by making it easier to get messages out to your firm’s growing Social Network audience.

Have some comments or ideas regarding Social Networks? Send the CPA Site Solutions team a comment and let us know what you think.

facebook

Become a Fan on facebook

Twitter

Follow us on Twitter

Last time we talked about some of the sorting power of the Workteam Collaboration Suite from CPA Site Solutions offered through your website package. There is even more that can be done with the sorting power of the Filters you can setup.

After reading the previous post about setting up labels you should have a basic knowledge of how to add labels to the email in your inbox. This allows you to archive email and save yourself some clutter as well as organizing your email.

What if you want the labels to be applied automatically so you can save yourself some much needed time and hassle? Well, custom filters allow that to be possible.

Image of Filter Settings

Open the settings for your account. (See our previous post if your need directions on how to do this.) This time you are going to click on the “Filters” menu item which is located next to the “Labels” tab. This list starts out empty but you can fill it rather quickly.

Create A New Filter. Start off by clicking on “Create a new filter” at the bottom of the page. On the next page you’ll see some of the filters you can apply.

Setup a Test Filter. We’ll setup a test filter first. What you want to do is enter @CPASiteSolutions.com in the “From:” field then click the “Next Step >>” button.

On the next screen you’ll see at the top a few options of what you want the filter to do, right now we are working on adding a label as it arrives, so place a check next to “Apply the label:” and select a label.

Apply The Filter to An Email. Below these choices you’ll see a list of emails you have received from @CPASiteSolutions.com and you can apply the labels to them as well by checking the box that says “Also apply the filter to X conversations below” before hitting create filter.

Filters In Action

So what we’ve done is now added a label to all email you have received from @CPASiteSolutions.com. This setting also applies to all new emails from @CPASiteSolutions.com.

A look back at the options for what a filter can do allows you greater organization by automatically achieving email, or flagging it as being read, to even just adding a star.

Have any comments regarding the use of filters? Let us know we would love to hear from you.

CPA Site Solutions default form.

The default form that comes with any accounting website from CPA Site Solutions works great for most situations. There are times however when a custom form is better suited for a specific need.

You may have more information you would like to get from a user when they submit the form. For example maybe you want to include a field that requests information on how they were referred to you.

There can also be times when it can be beneficial to rename a field to alter the type of information you get from your form. Maybe instead of just a Name field you want to change that to Name of Business.

Any of these changes reflect ways you can customize the default form. An accounting firm’s website can benefit from the custom form as the information gained can be more specific. While the ends can yield great dividends sometimes the fear of editing a form makes it seem otherwise. Here is a break down on how to create a custom form.

Adding A Form Page

Add A Page. The first thing that you will have to do is login to your website and then head over to Add Page. Look for Form Page and then click add.

Open The Edit Window. When the page refreshes you’ll be presented with the Custom Form page and you’ll notice that there is an editable area above the Form where you can place some information about the form. However we are going to work on the Form itself, so mouse over it, click on it to open the editor, then click on the Questions Tab.

Questions Tab within the Form Edit

Add Questions. From here you can now add your specific questions by hitting Add Question in the top right hand corner of the pop-up. There are two options on the next screen, Title and Type, the Title field represents the question you would like to ask and the Type determines what kind of answer you are going to ask for and the Required check box makes the question required.

Know What Data You Want to Get. This is probably the most important part of the process as it underlies the whole reason you are creating the custom form. What data do you need and how can it be asked of the user without making them frustrated by the process.

This means you will need to take care with what questions you use and how you word them to get the data you want. Look for a future post on tips that you can use to create your questions.

Type Dropdown Choices for a Custom Form

Select (drop down), Radio, or Checkbox Options. If you choose Select (drop down), Radio, or Checkbox and hit save you will be brought back to the Questions list. Next to your question will be a button named Options.

When you click on the button you’ll be presented with the Title and Value options again. This time in the Title you should enter the value you want displayed in the drop down list, next to the check box, or next to the radio button.

Options for Radio or Check Box

The Value Is Important. The Value is what will be emailed to you when the person selects that option from the list and hits Send at the bottom of the form, so make it something you will remember.

Adding Options. After you enter your first Title and Value and hit save you’ll be brought to another screen. Here you can keep adding the options you would like displayed in the drop down list, as a check box or radio button.

With the knowledge of what each of these options can do you, you are now armed to make your own custom form. In order to give you a little bit of inspiration here is a form that CFO Services created and are using on their site.

Send us a comment on what custom form you have created for your firm’s webite and how it has worked for you. We may use it in a future article on effective custom form creation.

CFO Services Custom Form

We recently wrote about using Twitter with your accounting firm’s website. The benefits of using Twitter can be leveraged further by creating a Facebook account for your firm.

Facebook's Website

As with Twitter, using Facebook can help towards improving your companies online image and attract new clients. The more information and ways you have for people to find and view your online presence, the more potential clients you can reach and current clients you can retain.

Once you create an account with Twitter there are many different ways to use it. The following are only a few suggestions to get started.

Start a group or fan page.
As with Twitter you can update on what your accounting firm is doing. The difference with Facebook is you can supply a lot more information.

Photos, events, video and more can be leveraged to give not only information but also your firms online image. This work can create trust in users or in potential clients.

Post Upcoming Events. These can include webinars, conferences and other engagements or programs your accounting firm will either be hosting or attending. If you use CPA Site Solutions Seminar system on the firm’s web site then you can add details about this as well.

Update Your Page Regularly. The more you update your page with helpful information and tips, the more users will find you a resource and talk about your accounting firm. You can link directly to the blog that CPA Site Solutions offers every website from Facebook or post a short description with further details.

CPA Site Solutions page on Facebook.

Engage Your Readers. Viewers will  know if you’re engaged with the page and respond in kind. This helps develop trust and long term recognition of your firm.

Guide Your Online Image. The ultimate goal of using Facebook is to communicate with current clients and attract new clients. When you answer questions from users, post announcements, job openings, and share what your firm is doing an ongoing relationship is established. This relationship can pay off later in spades when you need to respond to both positive and negative events that may occur within your firm or the industry as a whole.

The social body of the Internet has a life that it is good to keep in touch with especially regarding your accounting firm. If your accounting firm establishes an ongoing relationship now via social avenues like Facebook and Twitter then it becomes that much easier to not only engage that social body but help guide it in a positive direction.

Have some of your own experiences regarding Facebook? Send us a comment, we would like to hear from you.

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That’s actually a pretty long answer, but the short answer is…

“Meta tags aren’t a big deal.”

In 1995 having well organized Meta Tags could skyrocket a site right into the number one spot on Google even for highly competitive keywords. Those days are gone. When I started specializing in CPA Website Design in 2002 Meta tags were already the fading stars of SEO.

What META Tags Are

Generically the word “meta” is used in technology as “data that describes other data.” In web design, be it an accounting website or a family home page, a Meta Tag is an HTML tag that identifies the contents of a Web page for the search engines.

Meta tags are hidden on the page, but they (as well as all the HTML code on a page) can be viewed by selecting View/Source or View/Page Source from the browser menu. Meta tags contain a general description of the page, keywords and copyright information.

What META Tags Aren’t
META tags are NOT magic bullets that will get your website good rankings. They were once, and there’s an army of scam artists claiming that they still are. Don’t be fooled.

The days when you can get a good ranking just by fiddling with your META tags are LONG GONE!!! If you want to get good rankings you’ll need to put some hard work into it until you have a unique CPA website design with a strong domain authority and plenty of relevant incoming links.

What META Tags Do I Need?

The “Title Tag”
A page’s HTML page title is it’s most important tag. Failure to put target keywords in the title tag is the main reason why perfectly relevant web pages with lots of good incoming links may be poorly ranked.

Searchers SEE your title tag in their search results, so a string of keywords won’t do.  Your title needs to read like a “headline” as it functions to not just tell the search engines what the page is about, but also get people to click on it.

Your title tag can be as long as you want it to be, but the search engines will ignore everything after the first 7 or 8 words, so be succinct.

Use keywords in your title tag that local prospects are actually likely to search for, like the name of your town, the abbreviation for your state, and service keywords that describe what you do. If you are optimizing an accounting website your target keywords are (in order of importance):

• Accounting
• Accountants
• CPA
• Tax Preparation
• Tax Planning

Trust me on this. I’ve done a lot of keyword research on websites for accountants.

Another option is to optimize to an industry specialty. For example “car dealer accounting” or “funeral home accountants”. You can even do both, as in “Hoboken restaurant accounting”.

Meta Tags as seen while logged into Site Manager

The “Keywords Tag”:
There is a Meta Tag called a “Keywords Tag” (in this illustration this tag is labeled “Search Engine Keywords”) that used to be very important, but these days it’s virtually meaningless. Google doesn’t even look at keyword tags any more, and Yahoo and Bing barely give them a sideways glance. We still use this Meta tag as a formality (in case the search engines decide to start using them again) so don’t leave it blank, but don’t waste a lot of time on it either.

The “Page Description” Tag
Search Engine Description is more important than it used to be. The search engine description is the block of text that will appear on the search engine when your page comes up on a results page.

Again… Treat your page description like a headline. The purpose of your page description is to get people to click on the link to see your page. Keep it short and simple and try to include important keywords from the title tag.

This is my favorite tag. When you are writing a Page Description Tag you are writing more to the human element than to the search engine algorithm. It’s really the only point in this process where you get a chance to make a connection with the visitor without having to worry too much about what the search engines think. When someone does a web search it’s because they want something. Your page description is your best chance to convince a searcher that you can give them whatever that thing is!

Should I Use Different Meta Tags on Different Pages?

Your Page Settings

YES! Search engines prefer sites that have unique meta tags on unique pages. Whenever you add a new page or rewrite a standard page you should modify the Meta Tags for that page to reflect the actual content of the new page. If you have a CPA Site Solutions site you can access an individual pages Meta Tags from the site map by accessing the page settings for the page you modified or added. You will see that the settings for each page has it’s own “Search Engines” tab.

Don’t waste your time changing every Meta Tag on the site. If the page content isn’t unique there’s no point in optimizing the Meta Tags for it.

Have any comments about the use of Meta Tags? Let us know we would love to hear from you.