How to Accountants can Use SEO Marketing to Increase Leads and Visibility

Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing is essential if you want your accounting business to stand out and get the respect it deserves.

So, where should you start? SEO is multi-faceted, and while many methods are universal, a professional offering a specific service obviously can’t use the same strategy as an ecommerce brand selling a catalog of products.

Here’s how to approach SEO marketing as an accountant:

Hire an SEO Consultant or Agency

As you will see in the proceeding entries, there are many elements to a successful SEO strategy. You can do some of the work yourself, but it’s time-consuming and difficult, and unless you’re a skilled writer or developer who understands SEO, there will be things you just can’t do.

So, hire someone who can do it for you.

The best SEO services for accountants are scalable. If you’re the only person in your business and you’re only targeting local clients, you obviously don’t need a 6-figure annual budget to target the entire US.

You wouldn’t expect a writer, designer, developer, SEO consultant, or marketer to do their own taxes (that’s your job), so you shouldn’t assume that you can do everything they can as an accountant.

Start with Local SEO

Start with local SEO. It’s still tough, but the fact that it adopts a narrower approach makes it a cheaper option than targeting everyone in the US.

Conversions are easier, as most clients want to work with local professionals, and you will have less competition.

Start by getting a Google Business Profile and then include regional-specific keywords in your content. So, rather than targeting “accountants for small businesses”, you would target “accountants for small businesses in [town name]” or just “accountants in [town name]”.

Optimize Your Website

SEO is not as simple as writing a few keyword-heavy blogs.

Before you even think about your content, you need to prime your website to optimize the user experience:

• Check your page speed
• Optimize your site for mobile users
• Simplify navigation
• Remove duplicate content and links
• Don’t overload your pages with unnecessary videos, images, sliders, and pop-ups

Google prioritizes the user experience. If they struggle to find what they need on your site, you will struggle to get the rankings you seek.

Do Some Keyword Research

Before you write content, you need to know what clients are searching for.

Use keyword research tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to discover the relevant keywords for your industry and demographic.

Add the main (most relevant) keywords to your foundation pages (Home, About, Contact, FAQs), and use alternative keywords for your blogs.

Choose relevant keywords and build your content around them.

So, a basic keyword like “accountants in [town name]” would work on your main site pages, but you don’t want 100 blogs focusing on the same thing, so those blogs should highlight less common keywords that answer user questions and bring more traffic to your site, including “X Reasons to Get an Accountant as a Small Business” and “How Accountants Help Small Businesses”.

Publish Relevant, Inter-linked Content

Now it’s time to start writing those articles and inputting those keywords.

The goal here is to produce the best and most helpful content—again, it’s all about the user.

Don’t overuse those keywords, include some helpful external links to high-authority websites, and link to other blogs you have written for users that need further reading.

It’s all about relevancy and quality. Google is not telling you that your articles will only rank if you use a specific keyword an exact number of times, it just knows that a well-written article on that subject would use those phrases and contain helpful resources.

Acquire Some Backlinks for Your Site

Google establishes reputation and authority based on how often reputable sites link to that content.

So, if a respected accountancy site links to one of your articles, Google takes it as a sign that the content must be good.

Organic links will happen if you have good content, but it’s a slow process, so SEO teams will speed it up by contacting high-authority sites and requesting links. They may offer a guest post in exchange (with that post including a link that points back to the target site) or even pay for it, although Google frowns on this.

Social media marketing also helps with external SEO—the more people that are talking about your content, the more respected it will become.

Avoid Black Hat SEO

There are certain tricks that can improve your rankings quickly, but they may fall under a practice known as “black hat SEO”.

They include acquiring low-quality irrelevant links and spamming your site with poor, keyword-heavy content.

The problem is that these methods can be effective in the short term, but as soon as soon as Google realizes what you’re doing, it will penalize your site and your rankings will suffer.

So, bide your time and remain patient. Don’t look for any quick fixes—there aren’t any. More importantly, if you’re looking for SEO consultants and agencies, research them in advance and make sure they are legitimate.

Some irreputable companies will make baseless promises, use black hat tactics to improve your rankings, and then take your money. By the time Google realizes, and those rankings have dropped, the so-called experts have disappeared and there’s no way you’re getting your money back.

Summary: Using SEO to Boost Leads and Exposure

SEO can be a shot in the arm for your accounting business, increasing visibility, improving leads, and ensuring you’re not paying big money on every click or conversion.

You can do some of the work yourself, and if you’re working on a limited budget and you’re not in a rush, you can start laying the foundations now, build slowly, and see how things go. The best results come when you work with experienced consultants and agencies, though. They know what they’re doing and have the experience to make it work.

So, for the best results, hire the best people—contact us today for dedicated accounting SEO that works.