Your SEO Company Guide To SEO For Accountants
Are you an accountant, own an accounting firm, or thinking about starting your own accounting business in the future? Whether you’ve been around the block or just dipping your toes into the world of SEO, this SEO Company Guide To Accountant SEO is for you! These days, an online presence for your business is non-negotiable, and optimisation of SEO should form part of your core marketing strategy. From acquiring new clients, to increasing visibility and achieving higher search engine rankings, follow this comprehensive guide to unlock the benefits of SEO for accounting.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Accountants Explained from SEO Company’s perspective
SEO can feel overwhelming, so let’s start this SEO company guide at the very beginning. What actually is SEO for accountants and why is it valuable?
Simply put, Search Engine Optimisation is an online marketing strategy that focuses on you or your business’s online, digital presence and using different techniques, ‘optimises’ it so that it is discovered by people using search engines and specific search terms.
Because our focus for this guide is accounting businesses, we will mostly focus on two main SEO strategies best suited for these kinds of services: The first is Organic SEO, which focuses on gaining more website visibility and higher SERP rankings, while the second is Local SEO, which utelises a Google Business Profile instead and focuses more on localised searches, and is best for businesses with a set physical location.
Both these SEO strategies have different benefits, but both prioritise the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and its rankings. These strategies also somewhat affect each other, so before we dive in, let’s take a quick look at some SEO strategy basics.
The Basics of a Successful SEO Strategy according to our SEO company guide
There are a couple of foundational SEO elements that must be in place before we can begin optimising our SEO further for accountants. Ensuring the following elements are up to date is crucial to the success of a future SEO campaign/strategy:
– Technical SEO: There is zero excuse for your website to not be technically sound. A technically proficient website is not only a fair expectation from users, but an entire SEO signal on its own, and one you definitely don’t want negatively affected. Google uses many indicators such as the structure of your website, naming of URLs, correct use of meta titles/descriptions and even how fast your pages load to help determine your ranking. So make sure these small, technical elements are up to scratch.
– High-quality Content Production: Ensure the digital content you decide to publish across all platforms, but especially your website, is useful, valuable and of a high quality level. This is crucial to target your audience’s queries but also so that trustworthiness and authority on your work is strengthened.
– Utilising Backlinks: When other websites externally link back to your website, that is known as a backlink. Backlinks are incredibly powerful, as they directly point to your business as an authority, which assists search engines in recognising your voice as an authority on the work you do, resulting in higher SERP rankings.
– Creating a Google Business Profile: We will go into more detail about this a bit later, however, this is only relevant should your business wish to target potential customers in your local area, and usually only benefits businesses with physical locations.
SEO Company Strategy One: Organic SEO for Accountants
1. Keyword Research
Almost every SEO strategy, no matter how niche the business, begins with intensive keyword research. Spending time and energy on this step so that you build the rest of your SEO strategy around successful, valuable target keywords and phrases will benefit you greatly in the long-run. But remember to always give your keywords enough time – an SEO company tip!
Keyword terms will dictate what content you create, and the more content created that targets specific user queries, the better your rankings, and the better the business! So as you can imagine, finding the right keywords to use and create content around is where the challenge lies but we will point you in the right direction in this SEO company guide.
It might be helpful to begin with your services. For example, if your accounting business offers payroll processing, it might make sense to create content around that term, that’s what we would do as an SEO company. Although sometimes, it’s not that easy. Even though a keyword might be getting tons of hits and therefore seems like the obvious choice, it also means that keyword is likely to be highly competitive, and if you are a brand new website, going up against sites with a much more established online presence means you likely won’t rank at all. To mitigate this slightly, try using keywords with location modifiers – ie: Johannesburg Accountants.
But where can we even begin to find these keywords and phrases? Luckily, there are some useful tools that SEO companies use that can assist you – paid and free options. Some of the most popular options for paid keyword research tools are Ahrefs, SemRush and Keyword Insights. Alternatively, Google’s own Keyword Planner is a good free option but it only shows actual data if you ahve run a campaign. An even simpler method is to simply use Google’s auto-suggest feature in the search bar. Of course, there will be no metrics for you to check the competitiveness, however it can provide you with a good starting point to figure out what people are searching for.
2. Optimising Content for Best Ranking Results
Now that you have dedicated efforts to keyword research, by this point you should have a decent list of keywords and phrases. We can now start to build content around this list and incorporate it into all our content creation plans so that our website can begin to rank for these desired keywords.
A commonly overlooked element in this process of using your keywords to inform your content has to do with search intent. This means not only implementing keywords correctly in your content, but ensuring your content is actually what your target audience is looking for in the first place! It is completely pointless to create a great piece of high-quality content that people will never interact with, simply because that information is not relevant to them in their decision making cycle.
To make sure you are always catering to your audience’s specific needs, before you start, look at what other content within the accounting space is ranking the highest at that time and see if you are able to find a new angle or perspective that will also work for your keywords. Get the delicate alignment between keywords and intent right, and the results will start rolling in.
It is also important to remember that search engines like Google especially, can be quite harsh when it comes to SEO marketing, so while optimising your content remember there is no need to be over the top – an organic scattering of keywords throughout your content will do just fine.
Many people have the incorrect assumption that more is more when it comes to SEO, but this can end up backfiring with the algorithm penalising you for keyword-stuffing instead of boosting your work – just ask an SEO company. Again, just like above, a good way to check you are safe from potential keyword-stuffing penalties is to check-in with similar content and look at how the keywords/phrases are being used comparatively.
3. Earning Relevant Backlinks Like an SEO company
We have briefly mentioned that building quality backlinks from other websites is a great way to enhance your website’s SEO. But what does that mean, and how can you achieve this?
A backlink is very simply a piece of anchored text (either your business’ name, topic, service etc.) containing a link directly to your website. Backlinks can really help to increase traffic to your website, but they also play an integral role in building your authority on your subjects and space (in this case, accounting) which is a critical ranking factor for the algorithm.
To start building backlinks, how an SEO company would, it’s best to begin by contacting websites where customers are already seeking accountants/accounting services such as business directories. Another method is to reach out to popular and reputable websites in the accounting space to see if they accept guest posts. Approach them with a well informed piece of content with backlinks to your own website and pitch it to them.
Strategy 2: Google My Business Profile (Local SEO)
This strategy is a great way to begin leveraging SEO results without actually having your own website – however, bear in mind that your Google Business Profile is affected by your website and vice versa, and having both optimised for SEO is always the best way to ensure top results – this is an important point to note in this SEO company guide.
This method is heavily reliant on physical location – with a Google Business Profile you are able to list your accounting firm or business to appear on Google’s first page or “map pack” as it is sometimes known. This creates a local business directory of sorts, allowing potential customers seeking accounting services within your location area to discover your business very easily.
This route of leveraging SEO like an SEO company is ideal for location-based businesses like accounting firms, so what are you waiting for? Let’s take a look at how to set up your Google Business Profile from scratch.
Step 1: Sign Up
Sign up to Google my business to begin creating your account. You just need to have an existing Google account.
Step 2: Supply Business Details
Enter your businesses basic information such as:
– Name of the business
– Business Type: this is a part of the option that says “Service business”.
– Business Category: begin typing and select a business category that best defines your primary business model from the provided list of options available. For example, some common options are “certified public accountant”, “accounting firm”, or “bookkeeping service” depending on what your primary services entail.
– Select your location services: Input the primary location your business serves, as well as any other surrounding locations that may apply.
– Relevant Contact Details: Any phone numbers related to your business and a website if you have one. This step is optional.
Step 3: Verification Process
In order to check if your business is legitimate, as well as access to some additional helpful features, it is always best to verify your business’ mailing address, this key advice in this SEO company guide.
Simply enter the mailing address you are using for your business in the fields provided and follow the instructions you should receive in your mailbox. However, if this is something you are not able to do for whatever reason, just click “Verify Later”.
Step 4: Services
Google will provide you with a list of options of services whereby you can go through and select the ones that apply to your business.
Provide a service not on the list? Not to worry, add all your custom services here too.
Step 5: Specify your Business Hours
It is obviously important to let people know when your business is open! Input your operating hours, and make sure to specify any differences in operating times. Ie: Your business hours differ over a weekend, public holidays, etc.
Step 6: Messaging
There is a feature that lets you toggle on/off to receive messages. This is also a good thing to specify here to let people know should they try to be contacting you in this way.
Step 7: Your Business Description
Here you will add an eloquent description detailing what your business is all about. It is also best to add the services you provide in this section which enhances SEO optimisation resulting in your business being easier to find.
Step 8: Add Media
Adding pictures or even video content to your Google My Business profile is a great way to assist searchers in gaining a better understanding of your business, but it also assists with SEO efforts by boosting your Business Profile.
Some good photo ideas to begin with could include:
– Your businesses logo
– The outside of your business/office/property
– Your businesses signpost if you have one
– The inside of your businesses location
– A few images of your client-facing staff ie. receptionist
This section can also be updated and edited at any time, so feel free to come back to it at a later stage, but always remember the potential effect on SEO efforts this may have.
Step 9: Google Ads Credit
At this stage Google will likely offer you a free R6000 in ad credit to run Google Search ads. Unless you understand how Google Search ads work and also intend on spending that amount on ads, rather skip this. The free R6000 credit only applies when you spend R6000.
Step 10: Always Update Business Information like an SEO company
Any missing information or information not covered in the previous step should be entered here.
This section could include things like social media profiles, but most importantly should contain your business location. Input a clear address and toggle on the option “show business location to customers”. If you do not have a physical space yet, obviously toggle this option off until you’re ready, an SEO company would not want to garner any negative reviews from customers arriving at an empty office.
Step 11: Content Creation with Google My Business Profile
With features such as “add product” that Google offers, you are able to consistently create posts using My Business Profile just as you would on social media.
Using the “add products” feature, begin to list the services your business offers, this will assist in improving your profile’s visibility and further assists customers in understanding the scope of your offerings.
Step 12: Acquire Positive Google Reviews
Now that your Google My Business Profile is successfully up and running, you can begin to ask customers to populate your review section online.
One of the most important ranking factors for Local SEO are positive reviews due to the fact that it directly signals to Google’s algorithm that your business is trustworthy, and helps other new customers in real life trust your business too!
Whatever SEO strategy you end up selecting for your own accounting business, following this SEO company guide will help you set up important foundational SEO practices that through applying consistent effort and review will only take your business from strength to strength!