Accounting remains one of the most competitive industries in the world. Being as cutthroat as ever, only the savviest accounting firms who know how to leverage the power of SEO come out on top.
SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it’s the process of enhancing the overall quality of your website to boost your ranking on search engines.
In today’s world, Google is the first point of contact for consumers looking to connect with businesses. This makes SEO for accounting firms the most lucrative digital marketing channel to target because it provides them with the highest number of potential clients.
To put it simply, the higher you rank on Google, the more clients you will generate. If you rank first on Google for a search term related to accounting, then you can expect to capture 28.5% of the traffic (Search Engine Journal, 2020).
Whereas if you rank on the second page, you’ll receive less than 1% of the traffic (Search Engine Journal, 2020). Without investing in search engine optimisation, your customers will be searching for your accounting services in the dark. But with it, you can generate more leads, more customers and experience growth on an exponential level.
What is SEO for accountants?
SEO for accountants is the process of optimising your website to rank for searches and keywords related to accounting. To climb to the top of Google’s rankings, an accountancy firm has to ensure that its website is optimised in all of the three areas of SEO: on-page, off-page and technical.
Doing so will communicate to Google that your website is of high quality and is more likely to provide value to visitors. When this happens, you’ll be rewarded with a stronger ranking on search engine results pages.
How can SEO generate leads for your accounting firm?
Google uses a myriad of different algorithms to rank websites. The system works by awarding a higher ranking to streamlined websites that offer the greatest value to potential customers.
To make this distinction, Google will strip each website down to its core elements for inspection. By investing in SEO, you would be optimising every area of your website to enhance your overall ranking performance for search terms related to accounting.
Given that there are 3.5 billion queries entered into Google each day, there is an unbelievable amount of traffic for you to capture.
Being at the top of Google’s organic search results will make you the first accounting firm website that many of your target market will come across, providing you with more traffic to be converted into leads and fully paying clients.
What’s the best SEO strategy for accounting firms?
Your accounting firm is unique – you have different needs and different priorities, requiring a different strategy to achieve your goals. Yet despite this, every SEO strategy must include the core fundamentals for it to generate results. They are as follows:
Keyword research for accounting
These are the search terms your target audience will enter into Google that relate to your services. This process identifies every query that will be responsible for landing traffic on your website. Compiling a comprehensive list of relevant keywords will lay the foundations of a bespoke and effective SEO strategy.
Optimising on-page SEO for accountants
The on-page elements have a significant impact on your website’s ability to rank in search engines. It essentially helps Google understand your website and the content you offer, as well as determining whether it’s relevant to your searcher’s query.
As part of the process, this involves ensuring that the content on your website is targeting the keywords that you’ve gathered in the initial phase. This is only one of many on-page ranking factors that you’ll have to optimise.
Optimising Technical SEO
Technical SEO focuses on the nuts and bolts of your website. As with a car, the technical elements are what determines performance. Google prioritises websites that are lean, fast and easy to inspect.
The first step to achieving this is conducting a technical SEO audit. This will rigorously inspect your website to pinpoint deficiencies that have a negative impact on your ability to rank, including broken links, duplicate content, how mobile responsive it is and much more.
Optimising off-page SEO
Generating inbound links is the crux behind any successful SEO strategy and it’s one of the biggest ranking factors. The goal is to have high-authority websites in the accounting and finance industry to have hyperlinks that point to yours. This indicates to Google that your website is credible and offers value, thereby providing you with a higher ranking.
Local SEO
Local SEO is what essentially puts your business on the map, quite literally. Whenever you type in a service or a product into Google search, it will display a list of businesses on a map that are based on your:
a) location
b) search query
It’s fundamental that all accounting firms invest in local SEO to generate leads due to its ability to maximise visibility in a specific location. Target keywords will vary but many will be location-focused e.g. tax services in London.
To strengthen your local SEO, you’ll have to optimise your business listings on local directories, create a Google My Business account, display contact details along with other elements.
Creating valuable content
If you’ve tuned into the SEO industry at all then you may have come across our favourite cliche, and for good reason. Content is a crucial ranking factor because it communicates to search engines what keywords you’re competing for, contributing to an enhanced ranking on their search results.
From a user’s perspective, quality content is what helps to solve problems. If, for example, your blog post can provide a specific answer to their query, then you’ll have just positioned yourself as an industry expert. This instils trust, enhances brand value and ultimately pulls customers closer to your brand.
What are the best SEO keywords for accountants to target?
Given that accounting firms vary in terms of size, expertise and objectives, there is not a one-size-fits all solution when it comes to targeting keywords.
From start to finish, your keyword strategy must be tailored to your individual circumstances. For example, you may not have the authority to compete for search terms that are being targeted by websites more established in Google’s SEO playground. Instead, there will be other search terms that you can rank for that will generate optimal results.
Is organic SEO better than PPC/paid ads?
Both forms of digital marketing are just as different as they are phenomenal when it comes to generating results. Again, everything is entirely dependent on your unique situation and so it would be wrong to deem one more valuable than the other.
Instead, both can be used to complement each other as part of a dynamic digital marketing strategy. Let’s explore both of these in more detail.
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisements
As the name suggests, with PPC you are essentially paying for clicks on your website. It’s a fast and efficient way to drive traffic onto your web pages by placing you nearer the top on Google’s search engine results.
Another advantage is that the feedback is instant. This allows you to create a campaign, run split tests and experiments until you’re able to maximise results.
However, the greatest drawback is that you have to pay for every single click that your PPC ad brings to your website. The more competitive a keyword is, the more expensive each click will be. Say for example, if you want to rank for ‘accountants London.’
Given the number of accountancy firms in the city, this search term is going to be very competitive. Therefore, you may be required to pay £3.00 for every click that this advertisement generates on your website. From here, everything is dependent on your website’s ability to convert traffic into paying customers.
If it’s poor, then your ROI may not be high enough to justify investing in a PPC campaign. If it’s great, then fantastic – you have a quick and profitable way of acquiring new clients.
SEO
What’s important to recognise is that SEO is a long-term strategy and that it may take time before you can create an online presence capable of generating organic traffic. But when you do, the results can take your growth to a different level.
Unlike PPC, your organic traffic won’t dissipate as soon as you stop paying for ads. This makes SEO a more viable strategy since organic traffic can still be sustained despite any cuts being made to marketing budgets.
See how Targeted SEO can help you grow your accountancy business
Do you want to generate more sales, more growth and more customers? Providing SEO for accounting firms is a core part of our service, where we empower clients by enabling them to climb Google rankings and maximise lead generation.
From start to finish, everything is about generating the biggest results in the shortest amount of time.
With our SEO services, we will help you:
- Bolster your Google rankings
- Boost website traffic
- Generate more traffic
- Be among the top-ranking accountants in local searches
- Increase website conversions
- Experience growth
To discover more about our SEO services for accountants, simply get in touch today with us at Targeted SEO for a FREE consultation.
