WordPress Plugins & Accountant Websites

WordPress blogs give users good flexibility as far as the template they have access to along with further functionality to their blog in the form of plugins. Other WordPress bloggers  create these unique applications, which are then upheld and endorsed by WordPress.

What the heck is a “Plugin”?

Anyone with a WordPress blog for their accountant websites can add plugins, and there are a multitude of uses and benefits to installing them; both for yourself and for your readers.

Some plugins are simple and can add things like social media buttons to your blog.  Others are more complicated, such as a plugin that integrates a full image gallery with dozens of viewing options. People use them often because they add a lot of fun, interesting and useful features that would otherwise require a lot of code writing.

Where can I download them?

Like anything, you can find plugins all over the internet. One of them is within the admin panel of your blog. Your admin panel has a menu item called Plugins.  To install one, simply click install!

There is also a WordPress Plugins page that is devoted to listing plugin options. You can search for all different types to narrow down what you’re looking for, and you can also view the most popular plugins. Downloading plugins from here requires an extra step.  You’ll need to locate the downloaded file, then unzip it before you can upload it to your WordPress blog.

However you choose to download and install them, plugins are easy to use. The only potential difference would lie with the security settings of the server that is hosting your blog.

OK, I downloaded a plugin, how do I get it to work?

Once you have found the plugin you would like to use, and if you installed it via the WordPress interface, you will need to activate it under the Plugin menu item.

Unzipped plugin files should be uploaded to wp-content/plugins folder. Then just go to the plugin menu and click activate. It’s usually just that easy!

Some plugins will work immediately, others require that you add code to your template. Additionally, some others require different adjustments aside from coding that need to be completed before the plugin will work. You’ll know which method you’ll need to follow after you activate the plugin, and if you have any questions about what needs to be done, you can always check the plugin authors’ site which will be available from a link within the Plugins menu.

How do I test this thing once it’s installed?

After you install the plugin to your blog, you want to verify that the plugin is working correctly. You can sometimes test your plugin right from the plugin settings menu.  Otherwise, simply go to your blog page and test it from there.

Once you have verified the plugin is working, you’re all set and you can continue to install and activate any other plugins you would like!

Of course, there is always the possibility that your plugin won’t work right away.  If this happens, double check that you didn’t miss any steps, and you may need to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress for some plugins to work. You should also review the instructions on the plugin authors’ site.

Is all this really necessary?

In a word?

No.

Plugins are fun and useful, but if you are happy with the functionality of your blog and only get a few of junk comments, then there’s no desperate need for you to start installing gobs of plugins.

Eventually the spammers will find your accountant website’s blog and you’re going to want to download and install some spam control, but you don’t have to do anything. WordPress stands quite nicely on it’s own.

For those of you who demand additional functionality from a blog or for people who don’t have the time to design, the plugins afforded to the WordPress nation are a good energy saving feature.

Optimizing Your Website: Is Swapping Backlinks a Dead End?

If you ever hear the term Backlinks (the incoming links to a website) it’s probably in regards to their significance to Search Engine Optimization. Backlinks are exceedingly useful in deciding the relative popularity of the best accountant websites and their ranking on search engines like Google. You’ll soon discover that loads of site owners all of a sudden want to be your buddy once you go public with your own website, especially as your site becomes more successful.

You’ll start getting emails from companies you’ve never even heard of that want to “exchange links” with you.

Be careful here. Some of these offers are automated and completely obsolete. Back in the old days we used to use a technique called “link swapping” and this technique no longer provides any search engine optimization benefit at all.

Here’s how it used to work:

Suppose I was an accountant in Naples, Florida and you had a firm in key west. I put a link to your website on my links page, you put one on yours pointing back. We both get a boost in the search engines.

This just doesn’t work any more. Google looks for these “reciprocal links” and ignores them on the (altogether reasonable) assumption that the owners of the websites involved are just trying to game the system.

Fortunately there are ways to get around this restriction by using your blog.

Most businesses have blogs that are hosted on unique URLs (web addresses that are different from their main website). Rather than linking to each others websites, we can link to each other’s accountant websites from our blogs. Google doesn’t recognize these links as “reciprocal” and this gives them some value.

Of course if you don’t have a blog, or if your blog is hosted directly on your domain you’ll need some other solution. You’ll need some other web property to link from or you’ll be giving out much more valuable links than you’re getting.

It may seem like a win-win situation where you both receive SEO benefits, but there are a few significant hazards you need to consider before accepting.

1) Know Who You’re Dealing With

Don’t take an offer at face value. Take a little time to research the company you’ll be working with. Keep in mind that people are going to see and even follow these links so it’s important to make sure you’re not linking to “bad neighbors”.

A link from your website is no different from an endorsement.

Your reputation is tied to your link partners. A link to a less-than-reputable website or business can harm you more than the SEO benefit from their link could help you.

2) Make Sure the Deal is Fair

There are many factors that the search engines look at when determining the value of your backlinks.

  • Links from home pages have much more value than links buried deep in the site.
  • A page with only one or two links on it has much more value than a page with ten or twenty links on them.
  • Links from pages that themselves have lots of inbound links have more value than links from pages with few or none.
  • Backlinks from sites that are relevant to your market will be given much more weight than sites that are loosely if at all related. Links from other types of firms still have value, especially if they’re in your market, but they won’t look very relevant to you.

Keep an eye on the fine print, too. Some companies are going to try to trick you by getting you to agree to give them high value links in exchange for weak ones. Often times they will request it be on your home page or another popular page (or even every page). In return they offer a link from a page buried deep in the bowls of an obscure website.

Some will also give you a great link, then after a month or two passes they’ll either move it or remove it completely and hope you don’t notice.

This isn’t a reasonable trade. Not only is this location less ideal for SEO than where they asked you to add their link, it’s practically impossible for anyone surfing their site to find it and will generate no foot traffic to your site either.

3) Remember Who the Boss Is

If you’re a website owner and you’re concerned about your search ranking make no mistake about who the boss is: You answer to Google.

The system Google uses to keep track of link popularity is called “PageRank”, and they’re very proud of it. It was invented by Larry Paige, one of Google’s founders, back in his Stanford days and it’s been getting tweaked and improved many times a year ever since. Google is sincerely trying to provide the best possible search results to their users, and they work very hard and spend a lot of money to achieve this goal.

Google doesn’t like it when people try to game the system. In fact Google would prefer it if nobody ever did any SEO at all, but let’s be honest here. In a competitive market you either compete or you wither and die, so that’s an entirely unreasonable position and they know it.

What Google has done is tried to limit what it considers harmful SEO techniques and forbid them in constantly changing published documentation collectively called “Google Webmaster Guidelines”. It reserves the right to punish websites that don’t adhere to these rules.

When groups of websites get together and form what Google calls “link farms” they reserve the right to penalize websites, or even de-index them altogether. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does the results to a business can be catastrophic.

You don’t have to look far to see the wreckage that Google penalties have left behind. Whole companies have been put out of business because they were suddenly de-indexed by Google.

Perhaps the most famous company to ever get hit by the infamous Google “ban hammer” was Overstock.com. They were lucky in that the Google ban didn’t actually force them out of business, but it cost them a fortune. They weren’t link farming, mind you, but they were using some pretty clever (and very sneaky) tricks to make themselves look more important than they were by getting universities to post keyword rich links back to their websites.

Google, who puts extra value on links from educational sources, didn’t take kindly to this and hit them with such a horrific penalty that they were forced to drop their multi-million dollar SEO campaign and start all over again with a new domain name.

It is not unusual for companies that email you out of the blue to be considered link farmers, especially if they don’t have a valid, non-SEO reason for wanting to link to accountant websites.

When you accept link exchange offers from companies that you’ve never heard of the odds are high that you’ll be linking into what search marketers call a “bad neighborhood”. This is a term search marketers use for link networks that have been flagged by Google, or are likely to be flagged in the future, of routinely violating their webmaster guidelines.

You do NOT want Google associating you with a bad neighborhood. Getting involved with a link farm can get you blacklisted, and once your domain is banned it’s very difficult to get re-indexed. It just isn’t worth it.

I’m not saying all offers to exchange links are bad. I’m simply advising caution.

Marketing accountant websites is a challenge, and you need to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves but you also have to preserve a unclouded mindset and think critically before committing your practice’s good name to a link partner.

Link “swaps” may seem like an effortless shortcut to better search position, but these shortcuts, like any other, can easily get you lost somewhere you’d rather not go.

Your Site Editor Continues to Evolve

This month, we’ve added three new features to your Site Manager to make it faster and easier for you to make changes to your site.

Customizable Header Images

It’s now a snap to swap out the stock photography image on the page header to something that reflects you and your firm. Click on a page in your Site Map, and click on the header at the top of the page. A box like the one at the right will open. Select Custom Image from the Header Style drop-down and select or upload the new image.
Page Settings Tab

The new Page Settings tab, found on the far left of each page in the Site Manager, eliminates the need to back out to the Site Map to change page titles or header images.  This allows you to easily alter the page titles that appear in your navigation bar.

Upload Files Button

It’s always been easy to upload image files to include in your website. From any page within the Site Manger, just click on the More Options link at the top of your screen, and select Upload Files. Click on the Files folder on the left, and upload your file. This works with PDFs, .DOCs, and almost any other file type you can cook up.

2011 Tax Organizer Updated

Looking for a way to make tax season simpler? Our Tax Organizer just got its annual makeover and is ready for the 2011 tax season.

This next-generation Tax Organizer is a dynamic web application that allows your clients to organize their tax information online, saving you time when preparing their taxes. You and your clients can securely access your client’s tax information anytime from anywhere, eliminating the time and expense involved in mailing paper organizers.

As always, the fully customizable Organizer offers you a secure way to catalogue your clients’ documentation and returns from year-to-year. Encouraging your clients to use the Tax Organizer can save you both the hassle of driving around town to deliver paperwork, and saves you the hassle of having to manually enter their information into your tax software.

Interested in learning more about the Tax Organizer? Click here to watch a video.

10 Ways Accountant Websites Can Increase Your Client Base

CPAs may all share the same profession, but their function can widely vary – from focusing on tax preparation only, to specializing in QuickBooks support to SMEs, to offering audit support.

But no matter their specialty, one undeniable fact is true in every case: just as with any business that offers goods and services, professional accountants must have clients. It doesn’t matter how competent or client-centered a CPA is – without an adequate number of new clients to provide revenue and keep the doors open, his business will cease to be.

Therefore, one of the first and most important question any accountant can ask is, How do I get my clients?

It may sound prosaic, but it’s true: having really great accountant websites are the key to any successful accounting business.

These days, you have to have an online presence, or your marketing efforts will fall flat.

This won’t change in the future, either. With thousands of students studying accounting, coupled with one of the most challenging of economies, finding clients is becoming a very competitive endeavor. Having a website will remain critical.

Here are 10 tips for how to use accounting websites to find accounting clients:

1. Make sure your website looks professional. Creating a website is no longer a rarefied craft. Plenty of options exist for you to not only get a web address, but also pick a professional design that’s targeted exclusively to the clients you want to attract.

2. Don’t try to do it yourself – use a web designer. While your strength is with numbers, a professional web designer knows how to make your site look great and run smoothly.

The trick is to not just attract visitors to your site, but also keep them once they arrive. To that end, your site should be both lovely to look at and chock full of helpful info.

3. Don’t overlook the importance of social media sites for getting the word out. The simple act – which takes all of half an hour – of creating profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is enough to gain exposure.

Facebook is the most important of these. To get started on this popular social sharing platform, simply create a personal profile and then create a “fan” page for your business. Get your friends to “like” your page, and soon their friends and their friends’ friends will be seeing your business’s name and a link to it. Then, use Facebook (and the others) to keep your clients informed about tax season and other financial matters.

4. Links are vital to generating traffic – so, on your website, be sure to post links to your social media pages. If someone visits your site and likes what they see, this will be an easy way for them to help you spread the word. A “like me on Facebook” or “follow me on Twitter” link will expose you to even more potential clients.

5. Post links to the websites of your notable clients. When folks see your client list, and maybe even click through to your clients’ websites, it acts as that all-important “social proof” that helps you appear trustworthy.

6. Useful websites for generating leads are online merchant sites such as eBay and Craigslist. These, and other similar sites, have extremely high traffic rates and are designed with classified sections that advertise services. You typically won’t be charged to advertise your firm; advertising with these sites will expand your reach to well outside your local client base.

7. Traditional advertising on newspaper websites can generate significant traffic to your homepage and physical office. Take a look at your local papers. You might be able to also get in their online edition, where you could either be listed in their “marketplace” or be featured in a banner ad. In addition, seek out papers and local publications in surrounding towns that aren’t too far for a new client to travel from.

8. Hike it up a notch; look for websites that advertise specifically for accountants. There are lots of websites like Accountant Finder that list accountants for a small fee, making it that much easier for leads to find you.

9. Bid system and lead generating websites such as adknowledge.com are plentiful online. These services, when used properly, can get you in contact with the clients you want and who need what you have to offer.

Do your homework here and ensure that you investigate the site before you join it. Some have fees involved and some are fly-by-night operations. If you want quality clients, use a quality lead generation site.

10. Finally, seek out and listen to experts in your field and take the time to learn from their mistakes and successes. Using Internet resources such as Websites 4 Accountants is a great way to learn new tricks and tips that can greatly improve your lead generation, which will then increase your sales.

Obtaining clients for your accounting business can be a challenge. But when you utilize a high-quality accounting website as your start point, your marketing efforts can be very successful – and more than worth the hard work.

Do This, Don’t Do That: Accountant Websites and Meta Tags

Since you’re reading this blog I’m going to make a number of significant assumptions about you.

I’ll just assume you are an accountant, I’m also going to assume that you either have or soon will have a website, and finally I’m going to assume that you have already taken to heart the importance of the internet marketing in getting prospective customers to contact you. I’m assuming you already recognize the web is an enormously competitive market that changes really fast, and that in order to make use of it effectively as a prospecting platform it’s necessary to have optimized content with a very high degree of relevance to user searches.

To be frank I’m presuming a lot, here.

If all this is news to you then I’d suggest getting started immediately on finding a really good accountant website for your practice, and then coming back here to learn more.

You actually need good accountant websites in order to get this to work, but once you have a superior site under your belt, if you know a few simple tricks, you can start the procedure of improving your search engine profile.

This is the key to growing your firm in the information age.

Now we’re not going to tell you everything you need to know about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, but we are going to get you started.

First, SEO changes fast, so if you haven’t been keeping up forget everything you think you know about it.

There was a time not to long ago when it was easy to get a good ranking in the search engines. All you had to do was “stuff” your pages with keywords, you could even hide them as invisible text or on pages that only the search engines could see, and you’d soon find yourself at the very top of the rankings.

Those days are long gone. Search engines began to recognize that these techniques were not necessarily leading end users to the kind of relevant information they were looking for, so the meta-crawlers were updated and SEO best practices had to change along with them.

Still, the appropriate use of keywords within page content is remains vital to the success of well optimized accountant websites. For example, a web page contains two “meta tags” that are still considered very important.

Meta tags don’t actually appear on the page, but the search engines see them as “titles” and “descriptions”. This is so the meta-crawlers that determine the relevance of websites will look to headlines and titles for the use of keywords. If the content of the page and the meta tags match the search engines will notice this, and this will boost the page’s “relevance” score.

Don’t even bother with cheesy old-school cheats like tiny text, keyword stuffing, gateway pages and mouse-over redirects. These tricks not only won’t work they’ll actually tick off the search engines.

Another type of meta tag, perhaps the most famous, is called the keyword list. Don’t waste your time on it. Most search engines don’t apply any importance to your keyword list, and if any still do they’re not giving it much more than a backwards glance. It can’t hurt to use the tag, but don’t expect any real results from it.

So how does this apply specifically to accountant websites?

Well like all businesses before you can start building links you need to get your tags in order. Use your tags. Make sure your page titles and descriptions are honestly descriptive of your page content and give all your important pages (especially your home page) unique tags.

You can also boost visibility by referencing your local area frequently–this will capture you a larger share of the people who are searching for CPA websites within your city or region.

On it’s own a website only has so much power, and in order to really do well in the search engines you’ll need help from other sites. That’s why more and more accountant websites are using blogs to boost both readership and rankings.

Blogs support effective websites in two vital ways. For one thing it’s a great way to draw readers. Accountant websites are great tools, but blogs are a lot more dynamic and fun. You can also use your blog to link to your main website, and search engines love that. It will be really good for your rankings to have an active blog full of relevant content linking to your your site. This lets you develop calls to action that ask the visitor to click through to your main website. And, obviously… you’ll attract fresh readers to the website. Readers are potential customers, so the more readers you earn the more customers you’ll get in the end.

Social Media “Share” Buttons Replace “Tell-a-Friend”

Looking for a really quick and easy way to get more people to visit your CPA website? If so, then you might want to try the new social media sharing feature we’ve just rolled out here at CPA Site Solutions. It’s just one of the many new time saving features we’ve added recently.

Social Media Share Buttons make it easy for people to “share” informative articles they’ve read on your CPA website with their friends, acquaintances, and business colleagues on social media sites.  And, once it’s shared on a social media site like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, then all of their followers see it too, which means there’s an increased probability of more people visiting your website.

There’s also a “Share Button” for Google Buzz–a social networking tool from Google that is built into Gmail that allows you to share photos, videos and links with people that you email and chat with on a regular basis–and Delicious. Delicious (formerly Del.icio.us), one of the most popular social bookmarking services on the web  enables users to share and store web bookmarks.

How it Works

At the bottom of every article in the Financial Guides section on your website is a “Share This Guide” button. If your visitors want to share an article about retirement planning on Twitter for example, all they have to do is click on the Twitter icon.

 

 

Not only do social media buttons allow your site visitors to share useful information they find on your CPA website, a recent study has shown that on average, email messages with social media share buttons generate a 30% higher click-through rate.

What are you waiting for?

Contact the one of our dedicated webmasters at 1-800-896-4500 and start getting more people looking for accounting services to visit your website today!

Site Manager File Upload Feature

With our new Site Manager File Upload feature, it’s now easier and faster than ever for accounting firms to upload PDFs, images, spreadsheets, and other files directly to their CPA websites.

This is really good news, because as we all know, busy season is fast approaching and anything that makes your life easier during this hectic time is always a good thing!

It used to be that when you needed to upload files such as PDFs, excel spreadsheets, images, or even word documents to your CPA website, you had to send the files to one of our tech support staff to do it for you. Or, you had to figure out how to use FTP.

Now, you can do it yourself with the click of a button.

That’s right. No more waiting around until someone else does it for you. And no more dealing with the hassle of uploading and downloading files to their correct folders using the FTP server.

Here’s how it works:

1. Log in to your “Site Manager”

2. Locate the “More Options” link at the top of the page and click on it.

3. Next, click on the “Upload Files” button.

4. This will take you to another screen. On the left you’ll see several folders. Choose the “Images” folder if you want to upload a photo. For all other files, choose “Files”.

5. Clicking on either of these will take you to a new screen. Click on “Upload”  and use the “Browse” function to locate the image or document on your computer. Finish by clicking on “Upload Selected File”.

Why Not Give it a Try today?

The Site Manager File Upload feature will not only simplify your workload during busy season, but all year round too.

If you have any questions about the Site Manager File Upload feature, please call a dedicated webmaster at 1-800-896-4500, or email us at support@cpasitesolutions.com.

Do you need a CPA website? Sign up now and get a 2-month risk-free trial.

CPA Website Marketing: Avoid These 5 Common Mistakes

If you’re trying to grow your CPA firm these days, you need to go online. The business world is now wide open, and you could find yourself bringing in leads from around the planet. However, once you’ve put yourself out there on the world wide web, are you losing potential customers by failing to communicate quickly enough?

Just having good CPA website isn’t in and of itself enough. You need to know how to use it effectively.

Financial professionals run into 5 dangers when first getting into the web space. Crafting a solid online presence requires a number of different tactics: social networking (like Twitter and Facebook), drawing attention to your site via article marketing and other tactics.

But what if you haven’t planned ahead for the increase in communication? But what if you aren’t sure how to find the blog comments and respond to them?

Take the following paragraphs into account as you craft a plan to meet the needs of your customers and deliver outstanding results as you expand into cyberspace.

Got a Comment on Your Blog? You MUST Respond!

Making a blog is an excellent way to attract a customer base and keep the world informed about where your business is heading. It also helps keep your website dynamic and interesting. But don’t just “set it and forget it.” If someone gives you feedback in the form of a blog comment, you have to comment on that comment. It’s just plain polite to respond to people who have made the effort to read your work. When you do, you show your professionalism, and you also keep any negative situation from getting out of control.

If you take the time to respond to each comment, you’ll find your blog receiving greater and greater attention. By the same token, if you ignore your commenters, others who check out your posts won’t be encouraged to leave a response.

Respond in Good Time to Emails

This one’s a big one: if you’re leaving email unanswered for weeks at a time – or even worse, not answering them at all – your customers are not going to be your customers very long. The best course of action is to set up your email client with an auto-response so that your clients know the email has reached you. After that, it’s best to reply as quickly as you can in person, even if it is just an “I will look into that” response in the interim.

Keep Track of Your Forums

Forums are notoriously difficult to make popular, so why would you leave questions unanswered and comments ignored? If you decide to start a forum, it’s absolutely critical that you monitor it regularly (check in every hour or so) and respond to all worthy posts – especially if they’re negative. And it goes without saying that all spam and otherwise inappropriate posts should be promptly removed.

Take Twitter Seriously

The age of Twitter is here. Even if you can’t stand this social networking microblogging phenomenon, your clients might be deeply involved in it. Folks are now using Twitter as a way to reach companies – and, alarmingly, lodge complaints against them. (They also say nice things, too.) Assume that folks ARE reading these comments and make sure you respond to them. It’s certainly important for the person who leaves the message – but it’s even more crucial for anyone “watching” your conversation to see that you haven’t ignored your naysayers and supporters. Respond to negative and positive tweets alike: ask the user to contact your company for a resolution, or thank them for their positive comment. This will engage them in a medium with which they are comfortable and may even get some exposure to your website and firm from your clients friends.

Being actively involved with your customers in this way can be the difference between success and failure in a competitive market.

Take Internet Messages As Seriously As Old-fashioned Letters

The object of both types of communication are the same, after all. But we can’t deny it: almost no one sends letters today. Email has taken their place – and whereas email is used casually in our social lives, in business, it should be treated with as much care as one treats a letter.

If you decide to get online – and I definitely suggest you do – please don’t make the same mistake made by others. Getting a quality CPA website up and running and then going back to business as usual is not going to work.

5 CPA Website Design Techniques for Establishing a Landing Page

A well considered CPA website design can successfully bring in potential clients using landing pages that contain these 5 key factors. This article gives you information about what techniques CPA websites ought to employ when establishing a knockout lead capture page.

Accounting & tax prep businesses with a terrific CPA website design will find it is simpler to entice future clients when they utilize a squeeze page or landing page. Studies have shown that this is an effective and proven method of acquiring leads. There are a number of ways you can use to create landing pages if you don’t have time to do it yourself such as employ a copywriter to write for you or utilise a landing page generator like Instant Splash. A lead capture page is essential in obtaining a site visitor’s contact information and is essential for any business operating online today. But any old landing page won’t do. The lead capture page must be formatted in such a way as to capture your visitor’s attention and get them to enter their contact details. With that in mind, here are the five key elements of a killer lead capture page for accounting firms with websites.

1. Headline

Nothing grabs a reader’s attention like a great headline. Write a good headline and you’ll see results right away. Great headlines are usually short. They don’t need to sell anything, they just need to be compelling enough to get a prospect’s attention–fast. If you don’t, chances are your prospect will move on to another CPA’s website.

2. Use Subheadings to Make a Point

Subheads are placed just below the headline. Whereas headlines are short, subheadings provide more detail and are a little longer.

Subheads also break up the sales copy and make it easier for your readers to digest the information that’s presented. There are a couple of ways to use them. For example you can use them as an opportunity to introduce a graphic or a screenshot of your product. It doesn’t really matter how you use them, just that you do use them.

3. List the Benefits

Now that you’ve captured a visitor’s attention, you need to discuss the benefits of what you are offering. Potential clients don’t necessarily want to know why you think your service is great, they’re more interested in knowing how they can benefit from it. That’s just human nature. One way to do this is to give them a sneak peek of a sample newsletter if that’s what they are signing up for. Words like “Discover why… or “Learn the secret to… followed by a short bullet list are highly effective at capturing a potential lead’s interest.

4. Use an Action Button

The call to action is one of the most overlooked elements of a lead capture page. By asking prospects to click on a link or sign up for a newsletter, you’re already ahead of the competition. You don’t want to spend time persuading reader’s about the benefits of your product and forget to ask them to what to next. The most effective CPA websites use a call to action that is short and action oriented, a concise sentence for example, or an action button or link.

5. Opt in Email Forms

The last step is to make sure you provide a clearly visible form for the potential lead (aka site visitor) to fill out. The most effective method is to simply solicit an email address using a simple contact form. Placing a visual element on all sides of the contact request form might increase your conversion rate, that is the number of site visitors who leave their contact details. There’s no absolute proof of that actually happening so it’s up to you to decide if you want to do it or not, but if you’ve taken these ideas to heart and incorporated most of the all-important components, you’ll have yourself a knockout squeeze page and be well on your way to making your accounting & tax prep a successful company both online and off.