Accountants play a vital role in the running of a business and provide a wide range of services including accounting advice, auditing and assurance services, bookkeeping, financial reporting, insolvency and corporate reconstruction, management accounting, management consulting, taxation, transactional accounting; and valuation services.
But with competition getting stiffer by the day, one of the greatest challenges that growth focused accountants face is attracting new clients.
Unlike the past, where most people relied on a combination of referrals from their friends and the local newspaper to find an accounting firm near them, today, most people turn to search engines like Google to find a good accountant.
So if your Accounting Practice website isn’t ranking in the top of Google for keywords that potential customer use, you could be missing out on new business.
The way to ensure your website is visible in Google is to implement search engine optimisation (SEO).
SEO is a technique that helps to make a website appealing to Google and other search engines.
The primary goal of SEO for accountants is to help make their business website one of the top sites listed when someone searches for keywords related to services that the accounting firm offers. For example:
In the search engine, the higher your accounting site appears in search engine results pages(SERPS), the more visitors the website is likely to attract. And the more visitors that the site gets, the higher the chances of converting them into long term paying clients.
Search engines use sophisticated algorithms to rank websites. They have automated search engine robots, popularly known as spiders or crawlers, that collect information on every site and rank them based on their authority and relevance.
SEO helps to ensure that your website ranks on top of SERPs when someone searches for a specific term related to what your accounting firm offers.
SEO is a broad term and has many tasks including link building, keyword research, on-page, and off-page SEO, mobile SEO, analytics and reporting, technical SEO, and much more.
Advertisement is still one of the largest expenses for accounting firms. It is estimated that accountants spend an average of 4% of their net revenue on marketing. If you implement good SEO practices, you can reduce your marketing expenditure significantly and achieve high ROAS. An effective SEO strategy helps to increase website ranking on the organic search engine results page, improving its visibility, which brings a steady flow of visitors for free. You won’t pay even a single to drive potential clients your accounting site; the search engine will do it for you. The fact that your website will rank high on targeted keywords words means that you will drive quality traffic to your site for free.
Building trust and credibility is not an easy task. It is a process that takes time because you have to prove to your target clients that you are reliable and trustworthy. One of the best ways to build trust and credibility is by having your accounting site ranking on top of Google search results. Research shows that people tend to believe the results that the search engine gives them. So, if your website keeps on appearing on top of Google search, the perception of your target clients towards your accounting firm will change for the better. SEO helps build trust and credibility by ensuring that your website is discoverable, clean, and delivers excellent user experience.
The primary goal of SEO service is to enhance user experience. The key to ranking high on the search engine is by delivering an excellent user experience. Major search engines such as Google have put in place mechanisms that enable their crawlers to interpret and determine favorable and unfavorable user experience. Today, positive user experience has become an essential element in determining a website ranking. SEO focuses on enhancing user experience by delivering quality content, fast page load speed, great internal linking, and much more. SEO aims to ensure that your target visitors enjoy visiting your accounting website by improving site performance and offering the information that they are looking for.
Every accountant aims to attract new potential clients to their business. The best and surest way of attracting new potential clients is by ranking high on search engines. Ranking on top of Google search helps to increase your site’s visibility, which in turn, SEO help to boost traffic and engagement. It also targets specific keywords, which help to increase conversion. SEO has a higher conversion rate compared to other forms of marketing because it drives targeted traffic. So, if you want to increase traffic, engagement, and traffic conversion, you should optimize your site.
Content is an integral part of SEO because it determines your site’s ranking. If you want to improve your site ranking, ensure that you post content that you would enjoy reading (like this!).
Remember that visitors have come to your website to look for information. If the published content does not provide value to users, they will quickly exit your site and look for another that delivers the information that they are looking for.
So, always post quality content that is informative, well researched, and relevant.
User experience refers to everything that makes your site fun and enjoyable to the user. It includes things such as web design, site speed, ease of navigation, and much more.
Search engines favour websites that provide a great user experience.
So, if you want your websites to rank high on the search engine, ensure that it offers a great user experience.
Keywords or Search Terms used by potential clients will determine the visitors that you will drive to your accounting website. Keywords will also determine your website’s visibility on the search engine.
You need to conduct keyword research to find keywords that your potential clients type on search engines when searching for the accounting services you offer.
Ensure that you include all keywords that are important to your accounting business. Also, don’t forget to focus on keywords that drive local traffic to your site.
For example, your keyword research might start with a seed term like “accountant melbourne”:
Note – keyword research example above is estimates only. The best data comes from ‘actuals’ using Google Search Console.
As part of our SEO services, we conduct a thorough Keyword Research to target specific keywords for accounting firms, analyse your top competitors, publish high quality content and much more.
SEO for accountants is important for accounting firms as it allows your business to find and reach more potential clients. SEO specifically targets customers that are looking for your accounting services and therefore it is important they find you first.
Our top 3 SEO for accountants tips is to publish high quality content, focus on user experience, and research relevant keywords to your industry.
When it comes to successful SEO for accountants, content is king. This involves publishing content frequently and committing to a schedule of SEO friendly blog posts. Additionally, the content has to be relevant to your accounting firm, meaning you have to stick to your expertise and ensure the content is logical and appropriate to your target audience. Lastly, it’s crucial to create unique content, different from your top competitors and not copy pasted from other websites!
