Do accountants need SEO? The short answer is: Yes. In a world where search engine supremacy and digital footprints matter more than ever, accounting professionals are also adapting to the online stage. Professionals are always googling for “SEO tips for accountants“, “SEO for accounting firms”, or “What is SEO in accounting?” Here, we will uncover the secrets of SEO for accountants that will enhance your online presence in this competitive landscape. Let’s dive deep into the most sought-after question for accounting professionals: How to do marketing for accountants?

What is the best SEO strategy for accountants?

The Best SEO practices for accountants are listed below:

1. Understand your audience
2. Keywords:
3. Quality content
4. Optimize your website
5. Local SEO
6. Backlinks and Interlinks
7. Regular updates and maintenance

Let’s take them one by one and see how we can use SEO to facilitate

lead generation for accounting firms.

Understand your audience:

The very first and basic step to building a powerful SEO for accountants is understanding your audience. By knowing your audience well, you can tailor your SEO strategies to meet their needs, create relevant content, and improve your website’s visibility in search engines. 

We must not forget that Google is also a company, and it needs to serve its customers, that is the visitors. Therefore, knowing your target customers is important for understanding what they want. This process is the first step toward building the market for your accounting firms. Further, these first and foremost SEO tips for accounting firms will help you pick your specific niche or micro niche. 

What Can You Do to Find People who are looking for CPA?

• Research your targeted niche.
• Visit direct competitors’ websites and see what they are doing.
• Run SEO audits on your and your competitor’s accounting website. This will help you measure various aspects such as SERP ranking, clicks, impressions, conversion rates, keywords, speed, and other crucial details.
• Analyze the buyer persona.
  

Keywords Research for Accountants websites:

The next tip for SEO for an accountant is to use the right targeted keywords. As an accounting firm, you have developed your website and uploaded the content, but your targeted market cannot see you. What will you do now? Keywords are the heart of the SEO strategy. These are the words and phrases your target audience types into any search engine when seeking help with their finances or accounts. To win their attention, you need to add the Best keywords for accounting firms naturally throughout your website’s content. 

It’s like adding spices to your favorite recipe – enough to make it tasty without overwhelming the dish. Things might go wrong if you stuff the keywords excessively. For instance, if you’re an accountant living in New York who specializes in taxes, using keywords like “tax accountant in New York” or “New York tax accounting services” on your website acts like a limelight that will attract clients to your door.

The takeaway is to write your accounting website content in such a way that both Google crawler and the audience can read and identify it. Further, you can also incorporate location-specific keywords such as “financial accountant near me” or “tax accountant in New Jersey”. This will help you get accounting leads.

What Can You Do?

• Analyze your targeted keywords on platforms such as  Smrush, Google keyword planner, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, etc. 
• Type in your related words on these tools and click on the go button. A table will appear showcasing the monthly/annual search volume of the word, with difficulty and intent level. Plus, you will get the data of more related keywords. 

Tip: Look at high-volume keywords with a low difficulty. 

• Google search page result is another great way to find what your targeted audience is searching for. Note down these words, search them on these tools, pick the one that suits you well, and incorporate them into your content.

• Choose one primary keyword and keep the other as a secondary keyword. The primary keyword is your main keyword, which you must include in your headings.
• Keep an eye on the long tail keywords as well. These are more specific and to the point. Plus, you might have a higher chance to rank on SERP. For example: “Best tax accountant in New York” is a long-tail keyword.

Write Quality Content for Accountants : 

As the saying goes ‘content is king’, content is always powerful when it comes to SEO for accountants. When a client comes in, he/she wants to find valuable information that answers their accounting questions. Creating articles and blog posts that answer common financial questions instead of long technical text attracts clients to your accounting services. You can share accounting tips, tricks, and stories to show that you’re not just an accounting firm but a friendly guide in the financial world. 

Thinking from the perspective of Google, it wants to show the best quality content to its viewers. If your content is scraped, copied, or of poor quality, Google will never consider it to be good quality content. Plus, you must use powerful CTAs such as “Contact Us”, “Book an Accounting Call”, etc, in your website content.

What Can You Do?

• Just write quality, informative, and unique content. Don’t write it just for the sake of ad approval. Google’s algorithms are very smart and they will catch you. 
• As per Google policies, your content must add value to the audience. Google strictly says that it avoids content that advertises products or services. 

• Further, Google prevents poor-quality content from ever appearing on the Search result page. Note: Stay away from scarped, copied, or poor-quality content. Create reliable and people-first content.
• Answer people also ask questions on your website.

Optimize your accounting website:

The nest on the list of SEO for accountants is: Optimizing your website. A user-friendly website is essential for both SEO and attracting clients. Make sure that your accounting website is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and looks great on Mobile devices.

In short, it must be responsive. A responsive design ensures that your site adapts to different screen sizes, making it accessible to a broader audience. Think of it as well-organized, comfy office spaces for your clients, where everything is easy to find and clients want to come again and again. Isn’t that great?

The structure of your accounting firm’s website is equivalent to the pillars of the building. Indeed, a poor structure will lead to the collapse of the building. For this, you need to keep an eye on what your target customers are searching for. This will help you create a proper site structure for ranking high on search engines. For instance, if your audience is searching for “startup accountancy”, you should look forward to making a dedicated webpage for this purpose. 

What Can You Do?

• Do proper structuring of your accounting website. Make a dedicated page for every important section that the user might be interested in.
• Upload the proper site map.

• Make sure no internal link in your website is broken. Make all your links crawlable so that Google can visit them.
• While writing content make sure it is structured properly, keeping heading hierarchy, indentation, and images in mind.
• Use copyrighted free images from platforms such as Pixabay, Pexel, Unsplash, etc. You can also create your personalized images on Canva, Figma, or Adobe Photoshop. Use appropriate alt text, description, and caption for the same. This will further increase your impressions and clicks

Local SEO for Accountants:

If you provide your accounting services to a specific area then local SEO for accountants is the way to go. Ensure your accounting firm name, address, and phone number are consistent across your website and other online directories. You can consider various accounting directories such as Justdial, Bark, etc. If someone searches “business accountant near me”, chances are high that your accounting firm will pop up on the first page.

Further, encourage your clients to leave reviews on platforms like Google My Business showing that your accounting services are the master in your local community. It’s a great way to reach out to people who are looking for accounting services in your locality. 

What Can You Do?

• Create a complete Google My Business profile. Upload all the required details your customer might search such as contact no, address, services, opening hours, etc.

• Leverage social media to the fullest. Analyze where your targeted customers might be spending their time. LinkedIn and Facebook are great connecting platforms for B2B leads. Therefore, upload quality content and engage with your followers frequently.
• Use other online directories such as Just Dial, Bark, etc.
• Make sure your contact details and address are consistent all across the web.
• Perform local SEO audits, including Google My Business Audit, Google Search Console Audit, On-Page SEO Audit, Website Audit, etc.
• Optimize your title, URL, meta description, and content accordingly. Be specific to your location so that you can rank higher on “near me” searches.

Backlinks and Interlinks Creation for Accounting Websites:

Backlinks act as a bridge connecting your website to others. These bridges are built when other websites link to yours. Search Wikipedia and analyze how they use interlinks and backlinks in their content. When reputable websites link to your accounting website, it tells search engines that you’re trustworthy. Share your financial wisdom, by guest posting on relevant websites, connecting with peers, and creating content that others want to share. Make sure you are getting quality backlinks from high domain authority websites. 

On the other hand, interlinks are equally important. It acts as a web for your website. When Google crawlers analyze your website, it looks for the interlinking in your webpage. The better it is, the more Google crawler can go in-depth into your website. In short, Google should know that you offer accounting services in the following domain and in which geographical location. The added advantage is that internal linking is much easier than backlinking. All in all, backlinks and interlinks are important for SEO for accountants.

What Can You Do?

• Use keyword-rich anchor text. The word that links your web pages is known as anchor text. 
• Use interlinks wherever possible. However, avoid using the same anchor text for two different pages.
• Use tools such as Google Search Console, ahref, and Ubersuggest link feature to analyze the links of your accounting website and competitors.
• Ask for links from other relevant sources through Blog posts, In-depth guides, Ebooks, Visual assets (like infographics), Case studies, and Original research.

Regular updates and maintenance:

Just like an office or home needs regular maintenance, your accounting website does too. SEO for accountants isn’t a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing journey. Regularly update your website with fresh financial and accounting content, like new blog posts, and updates to the services page. Further, fix any broken links, and keep an eye on your website’s performance to keep it top-notch. Old content with an updated version has a high chance of ranking up on the search engine result page and improving your click-through rate.

What Can You Do?

• Regularly update those pages with the most traffic and high-quality links.
• Don’t change the URL. Update meta description, images alt text, facts and figures, add images or visual graphics, schema markup, and interlink with new content.
• Repromote the updated content on all of your social accounts.
• Google promotes fresh content. Tell Google that your content stands at that front.

Conclusion:

So there you have it, that is the not-so-secret SEO tips for accounting firms. SEO for accountants isn’t rocket science. It’s more like creating a map that leads clients straight to your accounting firm. By using the right keywords related to the accounting domain, offering valuable content, and making sure your website is user-friendly, you can enhance your online presence and make your accounting services shine. SEO for accountants is the art of making sure your accounting expertise gets noticed in the competitive world of the internet.