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‘Accountants’ decline as search trends evolve

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25th Jul 2011
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Are people searching less for accountants online? That was the question recently posed in AccountingWEB’s ‘Accountants and marketing' private discussion group by Deep_Teaspiller, who noticed a “steady decline” in the use of the term ‘accountants’ on Google.

The member noticed a decline in its use over the past eight years, though the figure seems to have balanced itself out since 2009. Running a trend search for the singular “accountant” revealed a similar decline and plateau during the same period.
So are people searching less for accountants online? And why?
Discussion group members - several of whom work on search engine optimisation - waded into the debate, concluding that the trend did not necessarily mean the profession was on the slide. The reason for the apparent decline is because Net users are becoming cannier in their use of search engines and use more targeted search terms, for instance searching for accountants in a particular location, or a more specific accountancy service.
Mark Orr suggested, “A few years ago searching for a broad term like accountant would yield a few results and the best would be at the top.
“Now that would be a very silly search and yield loads of irrelavent (sic) results.  I suspect now more people search for the services they want like 'business plan' or 'VAT return' or 'IR35 advice'.”  
Orr’s comments were supported by members (and marketeers) Gerry Creedon and David Ellis, both of whom said online searchers are moving away from generic terms and becoming savvier.
“Attracting new clients is about the creative use of low cost marketing opportunities, getting an ROI on your marketing investment,” said Creedon. “Imagine your target client and 'reach out' to them, understand their needs and priorities, if you can do that successfully you have an advantage.”
“Nowadays, client acquisition is about clever marketing that means spending as little as possible to achieve the best results,” explained Ellis, who offers fellow members three search criteria to achieve this: Location, Specialist sectors, and Special skills.
“These are the core search criteria that a prospect will use to find an accountancy firm. If you can optimise yourself in these areas, you can make massive gains. But this is not a short-term solution to client acquisition. This is about building your brand - yes, even accountants need branding! - and ethos, creating niches and watching the longer term benefits.”
What do you think? Are people becoming savvier search engine users, or are people just searching less for accountants? What impact do you think smartphones and geo-location mobile web apps have to play in this, if any?
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