SEO for CPAs and Accountants

At Professional Services Marketing, we are here to help you and your accounting business thrive. Just as you dedicate your time and effort to your accounting services and clients, we dedicate our time and services to marketing strategies. We strive to help accountants grow and maintain their business. One of the ways we do this is by examining your online presence. This includes looking at your website’s Search Engine Optimization.

 What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is an important process that allows potential clients and referral sources to discover your website through online search engines. The SEO process is incredibly significant for growing your business. By improving the SEO strategy on your website, you will gain a higher ranking on search engine pages. SEO is the science of making the pages on your website visible and attractive to internet searches. It’s the adjusting, developing, and tuning of content and code of a website, and the promotion of that website on other sites throughout the web. It does this in ways that increase the chances of one or more of the web pages appearing in the search engine results page, and it involves keyword optimization to attract searchers and search engines.

Every business that has a website benefits by enhancing Search Engine Optimization and by utilizing professional services that help people, like accountants and other professionals, whose focus lies elsewhere.

The Science of SEO

Many people believe that SEO is all about keyword selection, however, it is much more intricate. It involves many details, like optimizing your site structure, creating custom content, and tracking your site’s analytics. SEO is the backbone of any internet marketing and is an important tool that accounting businesses should be unitizing. The end goal of SEO is to help grow your accounting business while assisting those who are trying to locate your accounting services and navigate your site with ease. This is done by incorporating the science of SEO. SEO works by optimizing your site for the search engine that you want to rank for, whether it’s Google, Bing, Amazon, or any other search engine.

The way in which people find services of all types has shifted almost exclusively to internet searches. Of course, this includes accountants. One of the best ways to stay in front of your potential clients is by optimizing your website for specific search results related to accountants, CPA firms and accounting in general. By optimizing your website with search optimization keywords you are optimizing your position to generate business through internet searches, referrals and traditional advertising methods.

Even if you’re not looking for new accounting clients to come directly from your website, it is important to ensure that new clients are able to locate your business. Referrals are another important aspect of SEO; when your existing clients send you a referral, those prospective clients should be able to easily locate you online. You may also have other sources such as financial advisors and attorneys who want to refer clients your way, but they need to be able to find your website online, as well. For any and all prospective new clients to find your website online, it’s essential that each page of your website is optimized to increase its likelihood of being clicked. SEO helps businesses, including accountants, to optimize their sites so that current and future clients can find you. Search engines like Google, Safari, Bing, and Yahoo rely on complex algorithms to determine 1) what content is on a page, and 2) how relevant that content is to potential visitors. Your “search rank” is determined from that data. Word use on your webpage and the way it’s presented is important.

Search Engine Optimization is incredibly complex to master, and we know that technology is a staple in society and a staple to success. To increase the online visibility of your accounting firm, it is important to market the right way and stay current. Google is continuously releasing new best practices when it comes to SEO, which are often tough to keep up with. Why spend your time trying to master the newest algorithm updates when you could be working with experts who specialize in SEO? For a company, business, or individual to obtain financial stability and success, they should utilize an expert who can make their online presence as successful as possible.

The Importance of a Healthy Website

The foundation of any good SEO strategy is a healthy website. Our SEO strategists will continue to fix the errors that impact the health of your website. This helps content to rank higher, and attract more traffic, leads, and business to your website. Read on to see some of the key ways in which we will optimize your online presence.

On-Site SEO for CPAs and Accountants

PSM’s team of SEO experts will work with your firm to analyze your current SEO strategy (if you have one) and make a proactive plan for improvement. We typically do the following with every webpage we optimize:

1. Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly, fast, and secure.
2. Incorporate your SEO keywords into top search results related to accountants. There are approximately 50 top keywords that are the best for SEO pertaining to accountants.
3. Optimize your website’s content, title tags, headings, meta descriptions, and page titles for your keywords.

Title Tags- the tag that appears on search engine pages as the clickable headline for your site

Meta Description- the snippet of preview text that appears under the page title on search engine pages. We help accounting firms draft custom meta descriptions that will help their page get noticed.

Title Pages- This one is pretty straightforward, it’s the title of your webpage. The title of any web page should be between 50 and 60 characters. It should be descriptive, cogent, inviting, and enticing to potential customers.

4. Claim and optimize your Google My Business Profile completely.
5. Claim and fill out your local directory listings with the same consistent name, address and phone number.
6. Determine a keyword – Each page on your website should have a unique keyword that helps Google determine the topic of that page. We do this by creating a key-phrase-optimized blog that contains high-quality content that is updated regularly.
7. Page Content – Believe it or not, every single page on your website should have a minimum of 500-800 words of content. Although that may sound a bit verbose, we promise it’s not too bad. The page content should include your keyword in the body of the text and be included in headings 1-3.

The Importance of SEO for Accounting Firms and CPAs

SEO for accounting firms of any type is absolutely crucial. SEO is what helps bring qualified new clients in the door and allows your referrals to easily find you. With a successful SEO campaign your practice will show up in organic search results. An organic search result is the area of Google that is directly under the paid ads that appear at the top of any google search. When searching any information online, the first few results to appear are paid and inorganic. Most users scroll past these to the organic searches below the paid ads. This is the first step to gaining new clients to your accounting firm via an online search. It’s proven that users who conduct business searches through Google usually close their deals at a much higher rate than users who find businesses through other means. Typically, these users are pretty much sold on your services and ready to close the deal because they have seen what you have to offer and how you present your services. Prior to contacting, it’s likely these users have already made up their mind and are sold on your business. This is how important internet marketing, websites and SEO can be.

These are some of the examples of searches that help people find your accounting firm. But, in order to be found, some of these keywords need to be in your website dialogue, along with other aspects of Search Engine Optimization. Now you’re getting the idea of how this works, but also how complicated it can be to be at the top of the internet search game.

SEO is very dependent on keywords and your SEO campaign, no matter how well executed, can stand or fall based on your keywords. If your website includes the right keywords, you will get more and more organic website traffic from Google as time goes on. Choose the wrong keywords, and your competition will surpass you. This is where marketing experts, like us, can help. Our SEO experts can assist with targeting specific keywords, along with hundreds of lists and ideas about what these keywords are for accounting sites.

The Three Steps You Need to Rank Well

Ranking your website to be the #1 search result in your area involves a number of key components and strategies that need to be executed correctly. As small business owners ourselves, we understand that our websites need to be optimized and indexed correctly. Here are our three main steps to boost your online ranking:

Our first step is to determine which keywords will be the most valuable to your company.  From there, we create content based on these keywords to help entice clients. Our 3rd step is to optimize your Google Business Profile so that your business appears in local maps searches as well as general search results. Finally, we will tie it all together through Google Analytics, to ensure that you can track and monitor the success of your Local SEO campaign.

Local SEO

Your website needs to be optimized for local searches. Local SEO helps you to target customers searching within a specific geographic location. This is important because 33% of all clicks, go to the top 3 search results on the 1st page of Google. So, if you have optimized your website for local SEO, you will automatically guarantee yourself a share of 33% of all online searches for keywords relating to your business. At PSM, we will do the work necessary to boost your ranking online.

Does SEO Work Immediately?

As an accounting firm, you plan to be in the game for quite a while, and Search Engine Optimization will help you accomplish that. Results for website SEO are considered to be a long-term strategy. You won’t see results over night, but the time frame will be affected by the quality of your content and how easily your site can be found and navigated. In general, six months is a good time frame to see notable results from SEO. It is during the first 6 to 12 months that you will see the largest gains. Search Engine Optimization is an investment that requires maintenance and ongoing attention. It is possible to see results sooner than this, but Google actually becomes suspicious of sites that suddenly increase in ranking. It is better to shoot for long term success. Who knew there was so much involved in creating a successful SEO? SEO is not a one-time deal. It’s an investment that requires continual care to see sustainable results. There is a lot that plays into how long the SEO process takes. However, there is no one secret, or magical ingredient for SEO. It takes time, planning, and careful readjustment to achieve and maintain rankings, ROI, and traffic. As an accounting firm, it is likely that you are not able to spend your time managing all of this. Let us and our experts handle it. From driving more organic traffic to improving your visibility and increasing sales, SEO can and will do wonders for your accounting firm’s business.

Building Your SEO Authority

Professionals in the SEO industry often throw around the term “SEO Authority.” What they are referring to here is the idea that websites with high visibility and a high search ranking have strong SEO Authority. One of the main tactics for our SEO experts is to increase authority. There are two core factors based on authority:

Domain Authority- The search engine ranking which bases factors on popularity, size, and age of the domain.

Page Authority- Measures that predicts how well a webpage ranks on the search engines results pages. Essentially, the higher page authority means higher search engine rankings.

Authority does not automatically guarantee visibility of your accounting firm’s webpages, but it is an important aspect of SEO. Our SEO experts will work hard to build your SEO Authority and improve your site’s ranking.

Why is Marketing Important for Accounting Firms?

Customer engagement is essential for your accounting firm’s success. Marketing your accounting firm gives customers, new and current, the ability to engage with your business. Marketing builds brand recognition and allows for healthy competition between businesses. Without marketing, your accounting firm will not leave a lasting impact.

Let us help you build your brand, bring in new customers and leave a mark on the world of accounting. Contact the marketing experts at PSM today!