Beef Up Your Company Website
Is your company website a place holder on the Internet, static and unchanging, a dusty description of the services you offer, a picture of the office, contact information? Or is your website a fresh, innovative, lively place to visit, where clients and potential clients can learn more about the people behind the name of your firm, get useful tips and checklists to help them prepare for visits with you, learn ideas they can share with their friends and colleagues, communicate with you comfortably knowing they'll get a response because the people behind the website have a pulse?
That really isn't a question. It's a call to action. Here's a simple test. Perform a Google search for "Accounting firm + your city" or "CPA + your city" or "Tax preparer + your city" - however you think people would describe you if they were looking for someone like you. Take a look at the search results and click on the firms that appear beneath the paid placements. What do they have on their websites that you don't have? Set a goal for yourself of making changes and improving your placement in the search rankings. Not only will you improve your placement, your overhauled website will keep your clients connected to you and will bring in new business as well. This week on AccountingWEB, Michael Alter, president of SurePayroll, offers some sound advice for how you can improve your website.
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Perry is a CPA and a former senior tax accountant with Big Four firm Deloitte. She maintains a small tax practice, she is a personal finance instructor, and the author of thirty books, including Surviving Financial Downsizing: A Practical Guide to Living Well on Less Income (Adams Media); QuickBooks on Demand (Que); Excel 2007 Macros Made Easy (McGraw Hill); The Complete Idiot's Guide to Doing Your Income Taxes (Alpha/MacMillan); and, most recently, Mint.com for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons). In addition, she is a former columnist for the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News daily newspapers.
Perry is a nationally recognized speaker who advises public accountants on using Internet tools to improve their accounting practices. She also taught a college-level introductory accounting class and was on staff at the Indiana CPA Society as a computer applications instructor. For five years, she was a contributing editor for Accounting Today magazine before taking over the helm at AccountingWEB.
Perry is a graduate of Indiana University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She returned to school to study accounting at Illinois State University, passed the CPA exam (in one sitting!), and worked for Deloitte in the Chicago tax department.
Gail has been named one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Accounting by CPA Practice Advisor magazine and the American Society of Women Accountants.
