CPA website design, from the first search to the client portal

Who is CPA website design for?

CPA website design fits a firm that wants its site to win new clients as well as serve the ones it has. Before booking a first meeting, people look the firm up: the services it offers, who would do the work, where the office is and whether the people named hold the titles the site gives them. The build differs across three levels of firm:

• Established local firms: one office, partners who decide and clients from nearby towns. The site has to appear in nearby searches for tax preparation, bookkeeping or payroll help, and turn the visit into a call.
• Multi-office and regional firms: several offices, or clients across a few counties or states, with a partner or manager who owns marketing. Each office needs its own page, and each state can bring its own title rules: the AICPA Code tells members that breaking the CPA credential rules of any jurisdiction where they practice also breaks its advertising rule.
• National practices: a client base spread across the US, often in one niche such as a single industry or kind of return, with a marketing team or agency in place. The site competes with other national firms for the same searches and works with that team’s tools.

Our web design page covers website work for any business, and the page on what a website costs shows how the price moves between those levels.

What pages does an accounting firm website need?

In accounting firm website design, four kinds of page do most of the work, and the research decides how many of each a firm needs:

• A page for each service: tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll, audit, review and compilation work, business advisory and entity formation, each saying what the service covers, who it suits and who at the firm does it.
• A page for each person clients meet: name, title, the services they lead, and how a visitor can check the credential.
• A page for each office: the street address, the hours and how to get there. The California Board of Accountancy tells consumers to check that the address on a firm’s website matches the one the board gives them, so the page uses the address on the board’s record.
• Fees and guides: a fee page if the partners want one, and plain-language guides to the questions clients bring every year.

Google’s SEO starter guide notes that people who know a subject well may search with different words from people new to it, and gives the example of “charcuterie” against “cheese board”. A firm’s name for a service and its clients’ words can differ the same way, so the page plan takes its headings from the searches and keeps the professional terms in the text beneath them.

How should a CPA firm website show credentials?

California’s Accountancy Act names internet websites, with correspondence and business cards, among the materials where an inactive, retired or military inactive licensee’s status has to follow the CPA title. This is what we would build to, from the board’s copy of the Act, current as of January 1, 2026:

• The CPA title: beside each person the firm confirms holds a CPA certificate from the board or practices in California under a practice privilege, and in the firm’s name only if the firm is registered with the board (section 5055).
• Status words: “inactive”, “retired” or “military inactive” right after the title for anyone with that status, on the website as on a business card (sections 5058.2 to 5058.4).
• No look-alike titles: “certified accountant”, “chartered accountant”, “registered accountant” and their initials stay off the site. An enrolled agent may use “E.A.” (section 5058), and Circular 230 lets the agent write “enrolled to practice before the Internal Revenue Service” but bars the word “certified” (31 CFR 10.30).
• The firm’s name: the name on the firm’s permit from the board, or a name the board has registered for a sole proprietor, written the same way in the header, the footer and the structured data (section 5060).
• A way to check: each CPA’s page links to the board’s License Lookup, which shows the license’s status, issue date and expiration date.

The rest of the rules, with the IRS’s and the AICPA’s, are on our accounting firms page. This is a planning summary of the regulators’ own text, not legal advice: a partner or the firm’s counsel approves every title before launch, and we build to that wording.

How do clients send tax documents through a CPA website?

Through the firm’s own client portal, behind its login, with the website pointing the way. IRS Publication 4557 tells tax professionals who collect information online directly from customers to make secure transmission automatic, and to caution them against sending sensitive data such as account numbers by email. It adds that under the FTC Safeguards Rule, tax return preparers must create and enact security plans to protect client data, and points to Publication 5708 for writing one.

So the site keeps documents out of its own forms. What we would build:

1. Forms that ask for little: a name, a way to reply, the service wanted and a short note. No Social Security numbers, account numbers or file uploads.
2. A clear route to the portal: a button on the contact page, on each service page and in the message shown after a form is sent, pointing to the portal the firm already uses.
3. A plain request: that message asks clients to send documents through the portal, not by email.
4. HTTPS on every page: the kind of secure connection Publication 4557 asks for when sensitive financial data travels online.

The firm’s security plan stays the firm’s own document, and the portal stays with the provider the firm chose.

Can an accounting firm website show fees?

Yes. For tax work, Circular 230 lets a practitioner publish fixed fees for specific routine services, hourly rates, fee ranges for particular services and the fee for a first consultation. Where costs may arise, the fee information has to say whether the client pays them, and the practitioner may charge no more than the published rates for at least 30 calendar days after the schedule was last published (31 CFR 10.30(b)).

Two more limits shape the wording. For the board’s licensees, its regulations rule out a contingent fee, as they define one, for preparing an original or amended return or a refund claim (section 62). And the AICPA Code treats a stated fee or fee range as misleading when a substantial increase was likely and the prospective client wasn’t told (1.600.010).

On a fee page we would build, each fee carries the date it last changed, so the 30-day rule is easy to keep, and a partner approves the page before it’s published.

How does a CPA website handle tax season?

The busy months change what visitors need, so the site changes with them:

• Hours: Google’s Business Profile guidelines let a business use its current seasonal hours as its regular hours and set special hours for holidays. The office pages show the same hours, so the two match.
• Booking: clients book a consultation from the open times the firm sets, which can widen for the busy months and narrow afterwards.
• The rest of the year: the California Board of Accountancy suggests that people ask about a CPA’s office hours, whether the office is open year-round and whether the CPA takes phone inquiries. A line on each office page answers all three.
• After filing: IRS Topic 254 tells taxpayers to consider whether a preparer will be around for months or years after filing, and to choose one they can contact if the IRS examines the return. It also notes that only attorneys, CPAs and enrolled agents can represent taxpayers before the IRS in all matters, including audits, collections and appeals. A page on what the firm does when a notice arrives answers that worry early.

Will a CPA firm website rank on Google?

Google’s guide to hiring an SEO is direct about it: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” It also says to find someone else if an SEO promises their changes will give you first place in search results. We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, or uninterrupted uptime.

What the build controls is how clearly the site says what the firm does. Google says it primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled, and its starter guide asks for link text that tells people what the linked page contains. So each service, person and office has its own page, the pages link to one another in plain words, and the sitemap lists them all.

Google’s local ranking help says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, that more reviews and positive ratings can help, and that there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. The site backs the Business Profile with the same name, address, hours and services. Keeping that work going after launch is our SEO service.

Can AI search tools read a CPA firm website?

Google’s AI features can, when the pages meet the technical requirements for Google Search. Google’s page on AI features says the usual SEO best practices carry over to AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no additional requirements, and that to be shown there as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. It adds that no new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org structured data are needed, and that structured data should match the visible text.

So the pages we would build state each service, person and office in plain text, and the structured data repeats those facts without adding to them. That makes a firm easier for AI answers to find, read and cite, and our GEO work carries it on after launch.

One setting belongs to the firm: the Search generative AI control in Search Console, which Google says has been rolled out to all websites as of August 31, 2026. Include is the default. Exclude keeps the site’s links and content out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Google Discover, and Google says the control isn’t used as a ranking or inclusion signal for the rest of Search.

What happens to the firm’s current website?

Whatever the current site runs on, we rebuild it in our own system, and its addresses still count: they sit in clients’ bookmarks, in links from other sites and in Google’s index. Before launch:

• A redirect map: each old address with visits or links gets a permanent redirect to the page that replaces it.
• Content worth keeping: articles and tax guides that still draw visits move across with out-of-date figures brought current, and the rest redirect to the closest page.
• DNS saved first: we copy the domain’s DNS records before changing anything, then change only the ones the website uses. The firm’s email records stay as they are.

What would we build for an accounting firm?

One site we built and run is the Alvy Logistics website: a 70-page rebuild on Astro in our own system. Alvy is owned by our co-founder Noah Alvarez, and DSI is an Alvy company. Alvy is a logistics company, so its site shows our planning, building and running at that scale, and nothing about accounting.

For an accounting firm, the size of the build would follow the firm’s level:

• A local firm: the home page, one page per service and per CPA or enrolled agent, an office page that matches the board’s record, a fee page if the partners want one, a consultation form and a link to the portal.
• A multi-office firm: the same for each office, with each office’s people, hours and services on its own page, and titles checked against the rules of each state the firm works in.
• A national practice: pages for the industries or kinds of return it serves, guides that answer the questions those clients search for, and structured data that ties each person to the firm.

What does a CPA website need after launch?

Upkeep, on a monthly plan. Newmedia’s guide says a standard monthly maintenance retainer covers routine software updates, automated daily backups and continuous security monitoring. Websults’ entry monthly plan lists uptime monitoring, basic security checks and 30 minutes of content or design updates. Your proposal sets that plan’s scope.

An accounting firm also has yearly changes of its own: new fees, people joining or leaving, a CPA’s status moving to inactive or retired, different hours for the busy months, and tax figures in older articles. Each is a small edit, and each one left undone shows a visitor an out-of-date fact. Our page on website maintenance covers upkeep in more depth.

How does a CPA website project start?

With a 15-minute call about what the firm needs its website to do. If a new site is the right step, a scoped proposal follows; if something else would serve the firm better, we’ll say so. We were formed in 2023, and from our office in Valencia, California, we work remotely with businesses across the US.