The Tax Software Revolution

The most common service that accountants provide to the public at large is tax preparation. That tradition has had a large hole blown in it by the arrival of software  packages that allow individuals to prepare their own tax returns with an on-screen guide walking them through the process.

Many have opted for this method, and for many of them it’s a good choice. Large numbers of them did not use accounting services in the first place, as they had simple tax  returns.

However there is also a large class of people who are utilising the yearly software option when perhaps they would do better with professional service.A good accountant  can find tax breaks or prepare itemised lists that help your tax situation where you may not see the opportunity or may not be willing to dedicate the time to itemising.

Why Professionals are Better than Software

The individuals that are caught between the “simple return” pool and the group of people who have to use professional help every year because of complicated personal  financial situations are the group that accountants need to recapture.

The best way to convince someone that paying for professional services will save them money in the long run is to spell it out for them, and the best tool for that is the   internet.

Many accounting firms working on their own are in a position to provide at least some financial advice that extends beyond annual tax returns.

An internet site is a compelling tool for explaining the goals and advantages of long term financial planning. It’s a method of explaining the multiple advantages of working  with an accounting professional rather than a 40 Euro software package.

Full Service Business Explained on a Full Service Website

An internet site can offer valuable advice to the increasing number of people who are working at home or on a contract basis for large employers.

A friendly – and partial – explanation on an accountant’s website will serve as an invitation to call and arrange a visit.  The usual collections of FAQs and recommendations, suggested links and biographical information can serve to introduce an accountant and develop a sense of professionalism before the customer and the service provider  have their first conversation.

An internet site is a better advertising tool and introductory method than direct mail, a Golden Pages ad, even radio or TV… better than anything but a personal  recommendation.

Contact Webwriter today for details of our website packages for Accountants.

Crafting your meta tags is the most important step in Search Engine submission.

A meta tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a web page. It provides information such as what the page is about, and whichkeywords represent the  page’s content.

Many search engines use this information when building their indices. The most important meta tags you need to focus on are the Title, Keywords and Description tags.

KEYWORDS

Keywords are words that your customers would enter into a search engine to find your site. E.g. while searching for a content writer you would type ‘web content writer’ ,  ‘web writer’ , ‘Website content writing company’ , ‘online writer’ as possible keyword searches.

While keeping in mind your target audience, make a list of keywords and key  phrases that describe your site. Put yourself in their shoes and think of the words they would type in a search engine to find you. Come up with as many keywords and key  phrases as you can.

Use plurals - e.g. ‘web writers’, ‘web content writers’

Use important words in different forms – e.g. ‘write web content’, ‘web writing’ , ‘website content’ , ‘online content for websites’

Don’t use the same word more than 4 times. Try using it in different forms instead. E.g. web site, web-site, web sites. Using the same keyword more than 4 times may be considered spamming in some  search engines and may cause your site to be blacklisted.

Keep your keywords meta tag length between 200 and 500 characters.

TITLE AND DESCRIPTION

Title
- This is what appears on the title bar when you open a website. This is also the link you see in the search results page of any search engine.

Description
- This is the description of the site (1-2 lines) which appears along with the title in the search results page.

An example of a Title and Description

Title – Web Content Writer and SEO copywriting services

Description – Webwriter offers a full range of web content writing including content management, SEO copywriting, e-newsletter creation and web content consultation.

The golden rule while preparing your pages for search engine submission is that all your important keywords should appear in your title, description and content of your web page.

Make sure that your title and description is populated with your most important keywords. At the same time it should be a ‘grabber’, as your potential clients will read your title and description and based on that synopsis of your site, decide to click and enter your site.

Keep your  title between 15 and 20 words and your description  between 100 and 200 characters.

While preparing your web pages remember to also use your important keywords in your alt tags. Some search engines also index the alt tags. An alt tag is a name given to  an image that is used in your site.

The next (optional) step in search engine submission is to use free online tools to make sure that your site does not have any spelling mistakes, dead links, HTML and  browser compatibility problems.

These tools also test your site loading time and give your site an overall ranking. They are very useful and will take only a minute of your  time. This will ensure that your site is ready to be submitted to the search engines

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website in a way that it ranks in a high place for your designated keyword.

CONTENT IS ALWAYS KING

The first thing which is important for an optimized website is content.

Content is always king.

You will never rank high for any keyword if you are not offering fresh and  original content. When writing always try to keep the word count above five hundred words. This might seem like an easy target, but when actually writing you’ll soon  get stuck at some point that you just can’t write any further.

When writing this text, try to put the most important keyword of your website in it a few times. This is the  word which you want to rank high for.

KEYWORDS

Do not spam your keywords all over the content. This will not work in your advantage, but in your disadvantage.

As   with everything; don’t overdo it. Google will penalize you for it which will even take you down in the search results.

Stacking keywords used to be a good strategy for  ranking high, but Google smartened up and created a mysterious algorithm which determines how high your website should rank.

Anything which will seem unnatural to it will receive a penalty. If you aren’t gifted with extreme writing talent you can even buy a few articles to offer your readers some original content.

Content might be one of the most important things when optimizing your website, there are other factors which are important as well.

Always fill in a good three to five word description in the title tag. This tag is shown in the search results. Putting important keywords in this title is a must! As mentioned before, don’t overdo it. Three to five words is more than enough to give a good description of your website.

There are two other tags which aren’t as important as they used to be, but it can’t hurt to add them. These tags are called they  keywords and description tag.

In the keyword tag you can put up to twenty (don’t overdo it!) keywords which might be important for your website.

In the description  you create a short description of the designated page of about 160 characters. This description will also show up in the search results, so it might be wise to give a fitting  description which corresponds to the title tag.

Another factor which is extremely important are styling options. Text which is displayed bigger with an h1 tag is valued  higher then plain text. Always make your content fluent by creating headers and titles with the h1, h2 and h3 tags. Even text which is displayed bold or inverted is more important then plain text.

Avoid technical stuff and stick to plain HTML if possible. The Google spider can’t read the fancy Flash and Javascript you put on your website.  Especially if you use Flash or Javascript for your menu, ditch it as soon as possible. The Google spider can’t follow the links in your menu and your pages aren’t indexed.

NAVIGATION

Use breadcrumbs when creating your website. It creates a better structure in your links, but it’s also user friendly. Visitors can see where they are and where they came from.

LINKS, LINKS AND MORE LINKS

You need so called ‘back links’, links from other websites referring to your website. One link from a website will count as a ‘vote’ and will give your page a certain rank;  pagerank. Pagerank is nothing more than a rank from one to ten which gives some insight on how many back links you have. There are a few ways of gaining back links.

The easiest way is to create solid content which people want to link to. Once again this proves that content is king! The better your content, the more people will link to you. Another way to collect back links is commenting on other people their blogs. You will most likely have the option to leave your link. This will drive some traffic to your website, but also counts as a back link which is what you were after for in the first place.

Contact Web Content Writer Webwriter today for your FREE Content Analysis Report.

Whatever the technical mechanism, Google is doing a pretty good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them with high rankings. Keep in mind that no  one really does know what the 100 factors in Google’s algorithm are but here are five that are definitely taken into account include:

Updating your web content:

Frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more. Webwriter offers a professional Web Content Management service which  includes updating your website content regularly.

Spelling and Grammar:

Google will not rank your site if there are spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Webwriter offers an editing service which includes polishing the following elements:

• Spelling
• Grammar
• Punctuation and sentence structure
• Vocabulary Check

Paragraphs:

Primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.

Lists:

Both bulleted and numbered form a large part of the text.

Sentence length:

Mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.

Contextual relevance:

Text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword.

Contact the Web Content Specialists Webwriter to have your web copy professionally written.

Father’s Day June 20th will see the launch of Ireland’s first National Family Portrait Day.

Families all over Ireland will get together on the day to shoot a family portrait session. Up to 500 photographers around the country will have the opportunity to participate in this event, the proceeds of which will go to charity.

If you are a professional photographer and would like to get involved, you can sign up at www.nationalfamilyportraitday.org.

It’s FREE, and it’s for a very worthy cause.

All families can avail of a Family Photo Shoot on the day at a discounted rate of just 49 Euro – all the proceeds go to the charity Families, Fathers and Friends.

For further information on this event or for Public Relations queries, please contact Debbie O’Halloran at debbie@webwriter.ie or info@fathers.ie.

Content is still King. Search engines still love unique content, and the more useful content there is on your website, the more opportunities you give searchers to find your  products and services.

Here are some ways to “free” extra content on your site.

• Record everything and transcribe it all into text. Interviews, conversations, product DVD’s, personal opinions, etc.
• Turn support emails into FAQ pages on your site.
• Turn PDF’s into HTML pages (although PDF files can rank on their own)
• Start generating videos of everything

Don’t have time to think about your web content, or staff available to do the work?Then consider a content management service like

Webwriter to keep your website content up to date and perform quality control checks for you.

No matter how well your website is ranking in the search engines and no matter how much traffic you’re getting, if your copywriting isn’t great, you won’t get sales. Those  rankings will be meaningless. And that traffic will be for nothing.

SEO copywriting is the glue that brings all your other online marketing efforts together. Without strong  glue, everything unravels, and you get no results.  If you aren’t converting visitors into customers, it could be that you’re making one or more of these 7 SEO copywriting  mistakes.

Targeting the wrong keywords

Just because you’re ranking well doesn’t necessarily mean you’re targeting the right keywords. You want to focus your SEO efforts on keywords that draw in searchers who  are in the final stages of the buying cycle.  Never guess about which keywords you should be targeting. Do your research. There are several great keyword research tools  online you can take advantage of.

Stuffing keywords

Amateur SEO copywriters think that repeating the keyword as often as possible increases their chances of ranking well in the SERPs. Even if that was true (and it’s not), this  method completely overlooks the fact that you need to actually convert visitors into customers.

Keyword-stuffed copy doesn’t convert. Don’t just write for the search  engines; write for your ideal customer as well.

Making word count a priority

One SEO myth that just won’t die is that there’s some magic word count you have to hit if you want Google to rank your page properly. Some people say that you need at  least 250 words; others believe it’s 400 words. The truth? It doesn’t matter.

Just search for any phrase, and look at the top results. The word counts are all over the place.  Instead of focusing on hitting a certain word count, just focus on writing clear, concise copy, no matter what the length.

Not being focused on the consumer

One of my favorite copywriting tools is the  We We Calculator. The purpose of this tool is to ensure your web copy is focused on the customer…not you. See, customers are  selfish. They only care about how your products and services will benefit them.

Your copy needs to use the word “you” as often as possible. Limit the use of “me”, “we”,  “us”, etc. because no one really cares about you.

Writing copy that’s difficult to scan

Eyetracking studies show that online users tend to scan content rather than read it. They scan in an F-shaped pattern, trying to get the gist of your copy as quickly as  possible. This means you need to write copy that’s easy to scan.

How can you do this?  Use short paragraphs, short sentences, bulleted lists, and bolded text to highlight  important information throughout.

Having a weak call to action

How can you expect your website visitors to take action if you don’t tell them what action you want them to take? One thing I’ve noticed is that too many copywriters are afraid to sell. They’re constantly demeaning sales-y copy, and they’re always trying to tone down their copy.

Look, I’m not saying your copy needs to read like a Billy Mays  infomercial script, but let’s cut to the chase, you’re selling products and services. So, sell them!  You need to have a clear, strong call to action that motivates visitors to  take action now. Keep your call to action brief, and only ask visitors to take one action so you don’t overwhelm them.

Not being credible

One of the biggest challenges companies experience when selling online is that customers just don’t trust them. With every word you write, you should be working toward  building your credibility.  Use statistics whenever possible, and it’s always a good idea to include testimonials on your website.

Take a look at your website copy. Are you  making any of these mistakes?

Gagandeep Singh

Making the web work for you is making your website generate more leads and more customers and more publicity for your business than the time or money you put in.

For a successful professional one of the toughest parts of creating a successful website is the time it takes away from other crucial parts of your business. You are successful.  You know that every available hour for your business should be spent with your clients or on strategy.

Why would you want to take on a second career as a website  publisher? If you’re smart, you wouldn’t. You are successful – you don’t have time. But trusting your website to just anyone won’t work either.

Your website must:

1.  look good
   
2.  have lots of information
   
3.  be popular in the search engines
   
4.  convert leads
   
5.  regularly add new information

Blow any one of these and your website will be next to worthless. Most web design companies can get one or two of these right. Frankly you need to hit all five, if you want to have lasting success on the web.

Webwriter clients average about 5 times return on investment on new business alone from their website.

We are not talking about referral business converted but only about new internet leads. Business they would not have obtained in any other way than the internet. If you are a successful professional in private practice, Webwriter can do the same for you.

Drop us a line and let us know about your situation. We’ll let you know if and how we can help you.

For websites with existing content, Webwriter offers a unique website content review service to assess and evaluate your website.

We examine:

• Overall effectiveness
• Text layouts
• Navigation
• Search engine optimization
• Other content-related areas

We will then provide specific suggestions that will help streamline and enhance your website content. To start making your website work for you, contact Webwriter today for your FREE content analysis Report.