Book Value

Effective Websites for CPAs: Grow Your Practice and Profits
By Kristi Stangeland
Insomniac Press, $21.95

As a CPA and president of KLS Web Solutions, Kristi Stangeland writes convincingly from a marketing and technology perspective, as well that of a CPA.

Stangeland provides marketing advice, such as ways to build credibility. Those ways include “a professional looking design and well-written copy that speaks the language of your target audience.” But she also notes that it takes more than good marketing to build an audience: “If you want your site to rank highly in the search engines, you will need to incorporate more than just Web site copy. You’ll need to make sure you have search engine optimized (SEO) copywriting.”

The book gives some good advice about SEO, such as: “Never guess about the search terms people are typing into Google. There are many services available online that can quickly show you exactly which words and phrases have been searched on that apply to your firm.” The book recommends www.Wordtracker.com and www.keyworddiscovery.com. Other advice includes using key phrases, not singular keywords. You will not be successful with single keywords like taxes or CA, but could have more success with Markham CA.

The book discusses how link popularity (how many Websites are linked to your site) is calculated by the search engines and what you should do about it. The book also gives some technical advice in building Websites but not enough for anyone who wants to do it themselves. Advice includes avoiding messy code and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tools. “WYSIWYG programs like FrontPage are notorious for leaving behind extraneous code that can get in the way of the search engines.”

Good advice is given about meta tags. About four years ago, keyword meta tags were incredibly important but are now basically obsolete. The description tag gets a fair amount of importance, but the title tag is the most important meta tag of all.

One way to tell how well your site is ranked is by using Google’s PageRank tool. Unfortunately, Kristi has not been too successful with her own site as she is ranked with a 0 out of 10. Perhaps all her efforts have gone into the Websites of her clients.

-- Michael Burns