Audit Your Website This Tax Season
By R. Justin Spencer, SpencerSEM

Audits are as inevitable as Taxes, so as Tax season is completed, now would be a good time to assess your web site and determine if it is doing anything for your business. How much business would you do if people could not find your office? Today you must realize that much of your new business comes from your web site not the yellow pages or Rotary club meetings! Your web-site is an extension of your physical office. You, therefore, must ensure that basic steps are taken for your website to be found by clients that need your service. Here are four quick and easy steps to get you started. First find out if your firm shows up on a local search. If you are not on page one, 72% of people who browse the net do not scroll and do not go to page two! Next, find out if anyone else links to your site. The more people who link to you the more important you are. Make sure your site is up to date and attractive to visitors (wouldnʼt have shabby office now would you?) Donʼt forget that a presence on the web is an ongoing effort; this is where the competition is. So have a method to review your statistics on a regular basis.

1. Find yourself. First, do a search for your site, by entering the following in the browser search bar, be sure to substitute mywebsite.com for your web site name; "site: www.mywebsitenamehere.com". If you see your website in the results, it means your site is being crawled (tech speak for search engines visiting and indexing your page so others can find you.) If your site is not listed, then you can add your site to Googleʼs directory by visiting www.google.com/webmasters and following the instructions to add your site. You will need the ability to edit code on your home page or add a new file to your website; check with whoever is hosting your website or your local geek to help you. You can also visit maps.google.com/local/add if your business does not appear in Google Maps.

2. See who links to you. Backlinkwatch.com and Yahoo! Site Explorer are free sites that can help you find out who is linking to your site. After entering your site name you will receive the results of how many websites, and which websites, are linking to your site. Links are like an internet popularity score. The more people that link to you, the higher your site will rank. National organizations (such as the AICPA), state organizations, local chamber of commerce listing, local attorney, banks, your blog, you and your staffʼs Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, etc. should all link to your business web site, thereby increasing itʼs visibility.

3. Update your content. Have content worth reading that will make users want to come to your site and other sites want to link to you. This time of year, it can be as easy as gathering links to tax forms, providing filing tips, information about filing extensions, etc. Update something every week or so. Regularly changing content keeps your site fresh, relevant and enticing to the search engines. Therefore, the crawlers will visit you more often, which increases your ranking. Outdated content, which includes your copyright, can mean your site is stale.

4. Track your website. Finally, go to www.Google.com/Analytics and create an account. Walk through the steps and it will generate a tracking code snippet for you. This snippet is then simply copied and pasted into your page code. Give it a few hours (anywhere from 3 to 24) to begin pulling in data. You can then view how many people came to your site, how they got there, how long they stayed, what pages they viewed, etc. If you already have Google Analytics, use the new annotations feature to make note of when you made changes to your site so you can review the effects. Audits are important, and these tips can help you improve your website during a time when more and more users are turning to the internet for help. According to Google Trends, search volume for "tax help" in January through April is more than double itʼs standard search volume. A search for "taxes" in April is more than triple the standard volume. Now is the best time for you to make small changes for big results next year.

R. Justin Spencer is a nationally recognized speaker and a pioneer in the field of Interactive Marketing. Justin can be reached at justin@spencersem.com, or visit his web site at www.spencersem.com for more information.