Our Design Portfolio for websites for accountants grew by 6 designs this month. We’re betting you’ll like the big, bright graphics and sleek look of these new pages.

Remember, you can change your design at no charge. And now is the perfect time to update, before busy season strikes again.

Note: These are Gold-level designs. If you’re a Silver client and would like to upgrade to a design below, consider an upgrade to Gold. Of course, Silver clients can always swap their current design for an updated Silver design at no charge – just check out our Design Portfolio.

Design 464 Gold	Design 465 Gold
Design 466 Gold	Design 467 Gold
Design 468 Gold	Design 469 Gold

Try a new look today. It only takes a few minutes of your time – and it’s fun!

How to Upgrade

If you’d like to swap out your current style for one of these new designs – or any of the options in our portfolio – just give us a call at 1-800-896-4500 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-800-896-4500      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-800-896-4500      end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Or email one of our webmasters at support@cpasitesolutions.com.

Most CPA and accounting practices have embraced email as a reliable and safe form of communication. This is unfortunate since email isn’t really all that safe. A lot of accountants are actually using email inappropriately and putting their client’s private data at risk by posting stuff like tax returns and QuickBooks files to emails. Protect your clients. Never assume that email is a protected way to convey sensitive info. When you send an email to someone it doesn’t go straight to it’s destination. It passes through a dozen or more mail servers, and these mail servers are popular targets with hackers and malware. This arrangement makes email vulnerable to interception by what’s called a “man in the middle” attack, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. These third party servers are completely outside of your control and have no accountability even if they are poorly or incompetently maintained. Even well tended mail servers can play host to Trojans that will quietly forward your emails to a hacker, most likely by posting them to a website.

All it takes is one hacked server along the way to intercept your email, and you’ll never know what happened.

Some email providers offer an added layer of security by encrypting messages, but this doesn’t prevent the file from being intercepted. Encrypted files are extremely hard to open if you don’t know the key, but given time a hacker will be able to get it open. Encryption does nothing to prevent a file from being intercepted.

Don’t get me wrong, email is a very valuable tool for an accounting firm. It’s unrivaled in speed, convenience, and expense. Accountants send hundreds of emails every week and most of these these messages don’t include private files. The problem only rears up when these firms email information that’s considered confidential. If the wrong people get hold of them documents like tax returns can seriously harm a client. Because accounting firms prepare taxes they are considered financial institutions. This actually makes emailing private information a crime. The federal law governing the security of financial is called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law provides stiff financial penalties for accounting firms and other financial institutions that fail to adequately protect their client’s data.

For the most part we’re talking about security here rather than privacy. Just be aware that in order to be compliant with the law you need to protect both. Privacy is about protecting your clients’ identities. It’s loosely tied to security in that it’s often considered a subset of authorization, but privacy breaches usually involve a business deliberately selling client information to a direct marketing firm or similar third party. Where privacy is about keeping the door locked, security is about the lock itself. Security is the actual online authentication and authorization protocols that networks use to protect information and the audit system used to verify the overall system’s effectiveness.

The best solution for this issue can be found in most commercially available CPA websites. Document portals are now commonplace. All of the best accounting firms make use of these systems and they are available through almost every CPA website provider.

Portals come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common. These great tools let you exchange files with clients quickly, easily, and safely. Unlike email a portal transfer encrypts the data and transfers directly from your server to the website’s. This eliminates the chance of your file passing through any third party servers and keeps the chain of information accountable and under your immediate oversight.

Don’t mistake this as a crass sales pitch. If you have a website through CPA Site Solutions than you already have access to a first rate portal system. If you don’t… well, I’m definitely not the only designer selling these features. Frankly, all the best CPA websites furnish a secure transfer system.

What I’m trying to do is recommend that you look honestly at your firms policy on emailing confidential information. If you don’t have a formal policy create one and make sure everyone at your firm knows it. If a client realizes these risks before you adapt your procedures there’s a very high probability you’ll lose them.

If you haven’t already done so stop broadcasting your clients private personal information by email right now. Get a secure portal and USE it.

Ads in the Yellow Pages. Tried - but still true?

Ah, the Yellow Pages. Such a comforting old mainstay.

Ads in the Yellow Pages have been great performers for accountants over the years – bringing in highly motivated prospects who are actively looking for your services. Much better than ads in the newspaper or on a billboard.

Of course, they are expensive – sometimes thousands of dollars.

Oh, and they’re less effective now, too, with the rising importance of the Web. Now that a lot of accountants have CPA websites, ads in the Yellow Pages are a bit misplaced.

Hmm. Maybe there’s a better way to advertise?

There Is – and It’s Called Pay-Per-Click

This statistic will make clear why Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads are now more effective than the traditional two-inch box in the Yellow Pages:

When looking for local services, 80% of consumers now search online.

Which means, if you’re only advertising in the phone book, you’re not even reaching 4 out of 5 potential clients.

That certainly doesn’t speak well for print ads.

And PPC Is More Affordable

You may have heard that PPC is expensive.

Sure, the most competitive keywords will cost you upward of $4.00 or $5.00 per click – which can add up fast.

But two factors make PPC a better use of your advertising dollars than you may think:

1. You can set a budget. With Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter, you set up a daily budget so you always know what you’re going to spend. Once a certain number of people have clicked, your ad is turned off for the day.
2. You control when the ad runs. You can evaluate your ad’s performance through the AdWords and adCenter metrics. This gives you a good sense of when your ad leads to conversions and when it’s getting random clicks that simply pile on to your budget without getting results. Set your ad to run only during the high-impact times of the day, and you make the most of your money.

Aren’t Organic Listings More Valuable?

Organic listings – those that show up on the center of the page and are not bought - are considered more valuable…

but only if they show up on the first page.

If they’re on page 2, page 3, page 4… then very few people will see them. And all your hard work doing search engine optimization – and hard-earned money spent on it – will be for naught.

On the other hand, if you buy PPC ads, they will show up on the first page – which makes PPC a much better bet.

Good News – Accountants Aren’t Doing It Yet

For the most part, CPAs have not gotten in to the PPC business.

This is great news, because it means you can buy keywords for less money. Your ad will also be more effective.

Get out in front of the pack and get involved with PPC advertising. Do it now – before the field is saturated.

The Yellow Pages Were Great – But Now There’s a Better Solution

I don’t want to knock the Yellow Pages. They worked for a long time – and well.

But people just don’t let their fingers do the walking anymore. It’s all about online search these days – and to get your firm noticed, you must have a presence there.

PPC ads are not only affordable, but also necessary – if you want new clients, that is.

So get in now while the getting’s good.

Sign up for our Platinum package and we’ll set up and monitor a Google AdWords account for you (while you control the budget 100%).

Brian O'Connell, President

Do you ever feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t understand the whole “search engine” thing?

Well, unfortunately, you can’t afford to ignore it.

That being said, it’s not rocket science. Thousands of firms effectively market their CPA websites online, drawing in all the new clients they need – and you can, too.

In this post I’ll explain why Google is so important, and how you can keep up with the latest techniques in marketing your business online.

This one is worth paying attention to, because…

If you stay in the dark about Google, you could be missing up to two-thirds of your potential clients.

It’s All About the Search Results

The Yellow Pages are out – and online search is in. When people need a product or service, the first place they turn is Google. In fact, about 134 million people use Google to find what they need these days.  (Some use Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, or even AOL – but Google is by far the biggest search engine, capturing about 65% of the market.)

Now, here’s the really important part:

Of the millions who use Google, 63% check only the first page of results.

Clearly, if you’re not on the first page, you’re missing a lot of potential business.

There are two ways to get on the first page. One is through optimizing your site to list high in the organic search results, and the other is through pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Organic Search Results

The organic results are the listings that appear in the center of the search engine results pages, or SERPs.

Here are the organic results for a search on “best accountant Indianapolis”:

Organic results are the ones that show up in the center of search results page.

Experts generally say that organic results are better than paid ones because they’re considered unbiased.

So, how do you get listed on the first page of organic search results? You have to do some fine-tuning of your code and content, which is called on-page search engine optimization. To take the first step, see this blog post about how to determine the best keywords. Or ask us to do it for you and sign up for our Local SEO package.

Tip: If you register with Google Places, your website will very likely come up at the top of the organic results. This is an excellent reason to sign up for our Local SEO service, which includes an automatic listing in Google Places, as well as on-page SEO, and more. Call us at 1-800-896-4500 or email support@cpasitesolutions.com for details on our Local SEO package.

Paid Listings or PPC Ads

The paid Google listings are the results that show up either at the top of the page or on the right-hand side, as shown here:

Paid results or PPC ads are those that appear in the topmost shaded area and the right-hand side.

Undertaking a PPC campaign is helpful for any business, but it’s most important for those who practice in a competitive, densely populated area, like Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York City.

If you’re interested in having a Google Adwords campaign for your accounting firm, take a look at our Platinum package. When you sign up for this package, we set up and monitor the ads for you. But YOU set the budget, so you never spend more than you’re comfortable with.

Google Doesn’t Have to Be Scary

Although Google’s reach is very far for the service professional marketing their business on the Web, with a little knowledge, you can turn their influence to your advantage.

Remember that two-thirds of folks looking for your services are looking on the first page only – and tackle that head-on by striving to list high in the organic results or signing up for a Google Adwords campaign.

If you have any questions about on-page SEO, our Local SEO package, or our Platinum package, call us at 1-800-896-4500, or email support@cpasitesolutions.com.

And, if you need a website, give us a try! You get the first 60 days free.

Brian O'Connell, President

Is there really such a thing as a “best lead”? Well, yes and no. All prospects are important – but those looking specifically for your services are the ones who are ready – right now – to pay expert rates for what you offer.

How do you attract these high-quality leads? In our Google-dominated world, firms whose CPA websites show up high in the search results are the ones who attract these prospects.

But getting listed on the first page of results requires some setup work. And the very first part of this is choosing the right keywords.

When you establish a list of relevant, effective keywords, you’ve taken the first step toward bringing in new clients.

The words people type into the search box are called "keywords."

“Keywords” Defined

So what exactly are keywords?

Put simply, keywords are the words or phrases people enter in a search engine to find you. They can be one word or several words. For example, “Dallas accountant audit” is a keyword phrase (also called a “search term” or “search phrase”).

Brainstorm

Your first step is to create a list of all the services you offer. It should be about 20 to 30 words long.

Here’s a short list of example keyword phrases for a hypothetical firm in Dallas. Note that in addition to the city name, you should use your zip code in keyword phrases.

Use Free Tools – Or Ask Us

To make it easier to identify your keywords, consider using one or both of these free tools:

Wordtracker – https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Google Keyword tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Or, if you’d rather talk over your particular situation with one of our SEO Specialists, call us at 1-800-896-4500, or email support@cpasitesolutions.com. One of our experts can guide you to the best keywords for your business.

Narrow and Refine

Once you have a comprehensive list of your services, it’s time to narrow them down to the best dozen or so keywords and keyword phrases.

Delete generic – or broad – search phrases. Use this litmus test: could the phrase relate to a wide spectrum of services? If yes, strike it from the list. You want specific search terms instead – for example, “Dallas leading tax preparation” is better than “Dallas accountant.”

Keep a variety. Put yourself in your prospects’ shoes. Will all of them type in “preparation,” or will some of them use the abbreviated form, “prep”? For the keywords you think are best, include all possible variations.

Use modifiers. Consider using adjectives that reflect the way people search – words like “best,” “top,” “leading,” and “affordable.”

Don’t forget plurals. This is another facet of thinking like the client. Some folks will use the singular of your service, and others will use the plural. For example, both “tax preparer” and “tax preparers” can pull in prospects.

What to Do with All These Keywords?

Once you have a list of the best keywords and keyword phrases to describe your services, you’re on your way to attracting new clients.

To make these keywords start working for you, you need to use them to “optimize” your web pages for the search engines.

There are several aspects to on-page optimization, but it basically means adding keywords to the text on your home page and the other pages on your site. Just watch that you don’t overdo it.

Aim for using 7 to 10 keywords on each page (“Dallas,” “CPA,” and “accounting” would be three good words to optimize for). Also – and this is important – make sure the text remains readable.

If you’re at the Gold or Platinum level, you get We Do It All for You Service – which means you can send us the edited copy for your home page and any other pages you want to optimize, with the keywords inserted, and we’ll post it to your site. Call us at 1-800-896-4500 or email support@cpasitesolutions.com.

Brian O'Connell, President

Are your clients satisfied with you? You want to believe they are – but sometimes clients get frustrated with their accountants because of what seems a small thing:

They can’t get in touch with you.

Especially during busy season, this becomes a real problem. A client who has a simple question becomes increasingly annoyed when their calls go unanswered. You may have your nose to the grindstone, but, despite your best efforts, your clients may start looking for another CPA if they can’t get two minutes with you on the phone.

I want to show you how to leverage CPA websites to mitigate this problem.

Using all kinds of tools that come with your site, you can provide your clients with the high level of customer service they’re expecting. Which gets you satisfied clients.

When You’re Too Busy for the Phone

When you’re chest-deep in client work, you don’t want to take the time to answer the phone. It interrupts the flow and dramatically lowers your efficiency.

In the busy season, encourage your clients to use these methods to get their questions answered – and avoid the phone.

Contact Us Forms

All websites with CPA Site Solutions come with a “Contact Us” form that clients and prospects can fill out on their own time with their question and contact information. Each submission generates an email to your inbox.

This means your clients feel the relief of submitting their question, and you can answer them when it’s convenient for you.

Clients can schedule meetings with you right on your website.

Book Appointments Online

Half the time, clients call you just to schedule an appointment. Wouldn’t it be helpful if they could schedule those themselves?

Well, they can, with our “Book Appointments Online” feature. They see your calendar (with your busy times simply marked “busy”) and they fill out a simple form that requests an appointment for one of your free blocks.

FAQs

Sometimes clients have answers to standard questions and they don’t really need personalized service. That’s where your FAQs come in, which come free with all our websites.

Here are some examples of questions your FAQs answer:

• When should I refinance my home?

• How much should I expect to pay in closing costs?

• Is interest on educational loans tax deductible?

• What kind of records do I need to keep in my business?

Videos

A video is an excellent way to get information across. With the enormous popularity of YouTube, folks are increasingly comfortable with this format.

It’s not hard to make your own video! I recommend Screenr. With this free tool, you can record yourself answering clients’ most common questions. Not only does it satisfy their need for information, but it also puts them at ease to see and hear you talking. It’s almost like a little appointment in itself.

Keep Clients Happy with Our Help

We are more than happy to help you take advantage of any or all of these methods to stay in touch with clients – and keep them satisfied with you.

If you have any questions about these features, give us a call at 1-800-896-4500 or email us at support@cpasitesolutions.com.

Remember – although it doesn’t take much to annoy your clients, it also doesn’t take much to make them happy again.

Does your site show a blank space where your tagline should be?

If you’ve spent any time online, you know that a website only has a few seconds to grab your attention. If you can’t immediately discern what a website does, you click away. This certainly holds true for CPA websites.

So, besides design, how do sites succeed in keeping their visitors on the page long enough to convert them into clients?

Through taglines.

A tagline is a memorable phrase that sums up your firm’s premise. An effective tagline gives visitors an immediate sense of who you are and why they should keep reading.

Because a great tagline grabs attention and encourages readers to explore your offer, it gives your site a major advantage – which means you win more clients.

What’s Your Unique Selling Proposition?

A Unique Selling Proposition – or USP – is what differentiates you from your competitors. It’s the reason folks choose you over someone else.

Your tagline should make your USP clear. A great example of this comes from FedEx: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” This brilliant line instantly conveys FedEx’s USP – that they will deliver your package the next day no matter what.

Play to Emotion

When constructing your tagline, remember that people respond best to slogans that stir emotions – particularly fear and greed. You might focus on how your firm gets the client more money (greed) – or how it prevents their business from failing (fear).

An example of a tagline that plays on fear is from Head & Shoulders: “Get ready for beautiful, flake free hair.” Even if the consumer didn’t have a fear of having dandruff before they read this tagline, once they do, their aversion to having flaky hair motivates them to buy the product.

Communicate the Benefits of Choosing You

Most important, your tagline needs to convince your prospects that they will gain real benefits from staying on your page. Here are some of the best taglines from CPAs in major cities – all of which convey the benefits of choosing them for your accounting needs:

“Helping Clients Achieve Financial Freedom” (San Francisco)

“Providing the Highest Level of Personalized Service” (San Francisco)

“Show Us a Business and We’ll Improve It!” (Los Angeles)

“Helping Clients Keep More of What They Earn!” (Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C.)

If any of these appeal to you, use them! You’re competing for clients regionally, not nationally. So unless you’re in the city where we found these, it’s absolutely fine to adopt one of these as your own.

Our Dedicated Webmasters Can Add a Tagline

If you have a tagline you’d like to use, good for you! Our Dedicated Webmasters are more than happy to place it on your site.

They can place it under your logo, or they can add it as a heading on the home page.

Here’s an example of a tagline on a client’s welcome page:

"Fighting for Your Dollars' Best Interest" uses emotion and benefits to lure in the reader.

Call us at 1-800-896-4500 if you have a tagline you’d like us to include on your site, or email support@cpasitesolutions.com.

Remember – you have just a few seconds to convince visitors to stay. Make the most of that precious time with a winning tagline. Your prize will be more clients!

Provider of CPA Websites Now Offers Professional Designs and Increased Functionality for Email Marketing Campaigns

Winooski, VT – November 11, 2010 – CPA Site Solutions, a provider of CPA websites, released a new Email Marketing System that automatically matches the design of outgoing email messages with the accountant’s website.

The new email marketing system is primarily used to automatically deliver a professional client newsletter to each of an accountant’s clients on a monthly basis.

“The new email template is user friendly and efficient, and the format is great,” comments Thomas Moghaddam, a CPA Site Solutions client. Moghaddam continues, “I would recommend this system to a colleague. No question about it.”

Brian O’Connell, President of CPA Site Solutions, explains the significance of the updates: “The beauty of the new system is that it helps accountants build their brand by providing a consistent message to their clients and prospective clients each month. It’s all done automatically and requires absolutely no time from the accountant.”

Email Marketing an Exploding Field

Today, marketers increasingly turn to email for their promotions and client communications. Spending on email marketing will reach $1.1 billion in 2010, according to a Jupiter Research forecast.

O’Connell says, “I’m not surprised that email marketing is growing fast. It just makes sense when you consider the high cost of postage and printing. In this economy we’re all looking for ways to acquire new clients without increasing expenses.”

James Polk, a CPA Site Solutions client, has found the automatic monthly newsletters to be beneficial. He explains, It couldn’t be easier to stay in contact with my clients. Every month after my newsletter goes out, I get calls from my clients complimenting or thanking me. I’m already doing extra consulting work for 4 of my clients as a direct result of the emailed articles CPA Site Solutions sends each month.”

About CPA Site Solutions

CPA Site Solutions (http://www.cpasitesolutions.com) provides websites for more than 4,000 CPA and Accounting firms. They offer personalized websites, a dedicated webmaster, a secure client portal, a client newsletter, secure email accounts, search engine optimization, and 109 additional website features designed specifically for Accountants.

This demo video gives an overview of CPA Site Solutions’s offerings:

Brian O'Connell, President

Busy season is around the corner. Are you looking to grow your client base this year?

If so, I have two words for you: CPA websites. Having a website for your accounting firm is the number one way you’re going to pull in new clients.

But before the busy season kicks in, make sure you get your site looking and working the way you want. Maybe you need to know how to import contacts into your Email Marketing System. Or you need some help with Search Engine Optimization. Or perhaps you’d like to try out a new design.

Now is the time to ask for our help with your website.

And we offer 6 ways to get that help.

1. Videos

Our website – cpasitesolutions.com – is loaded with helpful videos. Our tutorial videos show you how to perform various tasks, and you can find those in the Help section. Others are more of an overview of various features, like this one about the Workteam Collaboration Suite:

2. Help Section

We have a vast Help section with numerous articles that give you step-by-step instructions on how to tinker with everything on your site – with sections like Modifying Your Site and Interactive Tax Organizer.

To access the Help section, click on the link at the bottom of our home page – as pictured here:

The link to the Help Center is in the footer of most our pages.

3. Leave a Comment

If you leave a comment on one of our Help files or in our Blog, we answer you with an email within 24 hours.

4. Chat Us Up

We have 60 hours of live chat coverage every week – from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern time.

To get to our live chat option, click on the image in the right sidebar on our FAQs page or on About Us (as pictured below on the left). Once you click on the link, you get a pop-up window and a webmaster comes online. You type your question in the box on the bottom (circled in the image on the right below).

The link for our live chat option is in our right-hand sidebar.

Once a webmaster comes online, you just type your question into the box at the bottom.

5. Email

Many of our clients ask questions through email, and that works very well. Just send your question to support@cpasitesolutions.com and a webmaster will reply. If you have a Dedicated Webmaster that you prefer to work with, just email him or her directly (e.g., Allison@cpasitesolutions.com or Rikk@cpasitesolutions.com).

Our goal is to answer all support requests within 24 hours – and it’s usually much quicker than that.

6. Just Make a Call

Our webmasters are available by phone all day Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, at 1-800-896-4500.

This is probably the most popular method for getting help – and it works great. Just give us a call and let one of our friendly and knowledgeable webmasters work with you to get your site where you want it to be.

Get Help Now – Then Get Clients

To attract more clients, you need your primary marketing tool to be in tip-top shape.

Your service pages should be updated; you should be thrilled with your design; and you should understand how all your tools and features work.

We can help you get your site just where it needs to be, in time for the busy season. We’re here to help!

Brian O'Connell, President

If you could list the top 5 contributors to the health of your business, would you include email? I think most of us would think on a grander scale – areas like client relationships, the ability to attract and retain clients, or staff expertise.

But think how impossible it would be to achieve any of those “bigger” pieces without email. It’s pretty tough to build a business if you can’t communicate with your clients, prospects, partners, and staff.

So what do you do when there’s a problem?

Our CPA websites come with a robust email solution that’s easy to use and accessible from anywhere. And part of the solution is a Dedicated Webmaster, who’s there to help you with any challenges that come up.

What Happens When Your Email Goes Down?

When you’re a CPA Site Solutions client, if you have one of those nightmare situations where your email goes down, all you have to do to get help is call our office.

Our Dedicated Webmasters will get to work on the problem right away – so you can get back to your clients.

Technical Problems? We Take Care of Them

Maybe the best part of this level of support is the hours of frustration it saves you. After all, you’re an accountant – not a techie! Let us take care of the technical details while you focus on your core business.

Our webmasters diagnose and quickly repair server issues, DNS issues, or MS Outlook issues so your firm’s email always runs smoothly across all your computers – at the office, at home, and even on your smartphone.

Meet a Few of Our Webmasters…

Watch this video to see some of our Dedicated Webmasters in action. Allison hosts the video, and Jon and Erik are shown talking to clients. (You can spot Norm and Joe in the background, too.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxMz_GwWgX0

Put Us to Work for You

If you’re a client, don’t be shy about calling up when you need help with your email (or anything related to your website). Our number is 800-896-4500.

If you need a website, check out our offer. When you sign up, you get 60 days with no obligation – so you can evaluate our Webmasters and see if they deliver the service you need.