Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

SEO secrets for accountants

by
6th Jun 2012
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Mark Lee talks with Onvizi Nick Rink, who reveals various SEO techniques accountants can use to ensure they are found more often by prospects searching online.

I’m pleased to be able to talk to you about SEO, Nick because there is a lot of generic advice that needs tailoring for accountants.  Where do you suggest they should start?

The very first thing to consider is keyword analysis. Before you get started with marketing your practice online it’s important to consider what people are actually going to type into Google to find you.  

I have long been encouraging accountants to focus on a specific niche to make it easier to distinguish themselves from all the other ‘general practice’ accountants.  Does this make a difference in the context of keyword analysis?

Absolutely. There will be plenty of small business accountants in each area. And they will all be hoping that anyone searching online will find their website at the top of the list. But it’s easier to get to the top of a short list of specialists who focus on a specific sector or type of work – as long as it is one that the public might be searching for.

At it’s simplest, keyword analysis might start by focusing on the provision of professional bookkeeping services or tax return services. By using Google’s Keyword Tool you’ll be able to get a better idea of which popular terms are most suitable for your practice.

Google keyword tool

So once an accountant knows their preferred keywords what should they do with this knowledge?

Once you’ve got a nice list of relevant keywords it’s time to look at optimising your website. We’re making the assumption here that the accountant has a website. If they’re just setting up a new practice and their budget is limited then there are plenty of economical options available.

For an optimisation starter it’s a good idea to have your address in your website footer. That way it shows up on every page and gives Google a strong signal about your exact location. The next thing to focus on is your title tag. This is the text that shows up for your home page in the search results and also appears when you hover over the tab in your browser, as in the image below.

This title tag is probably the most important element of SEO, other than the actual content of your site. It should be a clear and accurate description that tells the search engines what each page on your website is about. Google only shows 70 characters of the title tag, so there is little point in writing anything longer. Each title tag should only use 2 or maybe 3 keywords and should also include your local location where possible. As an example, if your target clients are small businesses who need bookkeeping services in the Guildford area then the title tag for your homepage could look something like this:

Small Business Accountant and Bookkeeping Services Guildford

The title tag for each page on your website should be unique, so that’s where the keyword analysis comes in handy. You can have separate pages for all the different services/keywords you would like to target, for example “Payroll Services”, “Annual Returns”, “VAT Returns”, etc.

Your reference to location reminds me of a key I stress to accountants who are comfortable servicing clients across the UK. They make the mistake of trying to make this clear on their website. In so doing they miss out on the benefits of focusing on their local area. And they forget that most people will be searching for a local accountant rather than one based many miles away.

That’s a good point and it’s even more important now than it used to be in the past as Google makes local search engine marketing much easier than national marketing.

Claiming and optimising your Google Places listing is one of the most important things you can do to help your local search rankings. Onvizi’s Google Places help page is a good place to start, then head over to Google Places itself and follow the instructions to claim the listing for your practice. Once you’ve claimed your listing you can go ahead and complete it with all the information Google asks for:

Google Places tool

  • Company/organisation - must be the name you do business as. Don’t include any additional details here such as city or town names and don’t include any keywords unless they are part of your actual business name, eg Joseph Bloggs Accountants Ltd.
  • Address – should be wherever you conduct your business. If you work from home then enter your home address, not a PO box. There is an option to hide your address so that the searching public cannot see it, but Google needs to know where you are (see below).
  • Phone number – should be a local number and not a Toll Free one or call centre
  • Email/Website – these two are pretty self-explanatory
  • Description – this is a 200 character sales pitch for your practice. You can include a couple of keywords in here, but it should read well and not be at all “spammy”. It should attract clients, not turn them away.
  • Categories – probably the most important section of your listing and should reflect what you are rather than what your business does. You can choose up to 5 categories, but the first one by default should be “Accountant”. The remaining four will depend on the key services you provide, but could include things like “Bookkeeping Service” and “Payroll Service”.

Complete any additional relevant information, including opening hours and methods of payment. You can also include up to 10 photos and 5 videos if you have them. These do help to fill out your listing and can help to convert more searchers to clients. Once you’re finished just click on submit and you’re all set.

That’s really helpful Nick and I’m sure many accountants will benefit from your advice on how to ensure their website shows up in the search results more often when someone searches for a local accountant.  Is there anything else they can do to make their website more attractive to the search engines?

Yup. They should try to get some citations.

I think I know what those are, but can please explain for our readers Nick.

For local SEO a citation is a mention of your business on another website. The best citations will contain your business name, address and phone number (NAP), which makes it vitally important that you are consistent with these. Google looks at all these citations and if inconsistencies start to occur then it starts to get confused. For example, if your firm is called Joseph Bloggs & Co then you shouldn’t use J Bloggs & Co when building citations. The best places to start with citations are directory and review sites, which would include sites like Yell.com, Qype.co.uk, Twitter, Facebook (sorry!) and then specific accountancy sites like AccountingWEB and the ICAEW.

To improve your local rankings it’s all about getting your foundations right, then building citations and getting customer reviews. It can be a rocky road at times, but persevere with it and the rewards can be generous.

Many thanks, Nick. I’m sure our readers will appreciate this advice and may well add comments to this piece online.

Nick Rink has over 15 years’ worth of experience working with SMEs and writes about local search, social media, the mobile web and other online marketing issues affecting small business owners. Nick runs Onvizi, an online marketing agency based in south west London.

Mark Lee is consultant practice editor of AccountingWEB and writes the BookMarkLee blog to help accountants build more successful practices more enjoyably. He is also chairman of the Tax Advice Network of independent tax consultants.

Tags:

Replies (4)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

avatar
By User deleted
07th Jun 2012 11:23

basics first ...

Validate your pages html etc - http://validator.w3.org/

Google sitemap (xml / dynamic) - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184 - & sensible refresh times i.e. T&C=never, News Pages=weekly

Don't 'stuff' keywords & keep them down to 10 or fewer

Register with DMOZ etc.

Thanks (0)
Mark Lee headshot 2023
By Mark Lee
07th Jun 2012 17:17

Ahem

JC - Those are hardly basics. I barely understand the concepts, what chance the average reader of this site?

Nick's comment when I copied your note to him was:

"that stuff is a little more technical which is why I didn’t include any of it. Has more to do with the technical setup of the site and how easy it is for the search engines to “crawl” the content, etc.

Have plenty to say about keywords and DMOZ, but that could take up a whole other blog post!"

Thanks (0)
avatar
By User deleted
07th Jun 2012 18:03

Fundamentals rather than basics ...

@bookmarklee - it is a good article but to my mind rather starts off in the middle of the process which is where I was coming from

Apologies, I take your point and probably should have said fundamentals rather than basics

Nevertheless if one doesn't have these in place from the start then all the additional SEO aspects could be for naught

For instance if the site is riddled with html errors (and many are) or Google has not been explicitly told where/what to find, then one may be starting off with issues

To some extent SEO is rather like decorating a house - the problem is that if the foundations are shaky or there are no walls then there is a fundamental issue. It doesn't really matter how good your decorating is there are un-necessary hurdles that prevent the optimum outcome

and a lot depends on whether search engines 'downgrade' sites or just don't move them all the way up the rankings if they find problems

Finally the web designer is key and whether or not they are on the ball; in this context I refer to https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/anyanswers/question/online-practice-docsafe to demonstrate the above about page errors

Thanks (0)
Mark Lee headshot 2023
By Mark Lee
07th Jun 2012 22:41

Thanks JC

Nick's reply to your comments:

"He’s right and the foundations analogy is exactly the same one we use with our clients. Before starting work on any site we always carry out a full audit which will uncover any issues that need fixing.

SEO is pretty complex and [during the interview] we didn’t touch on things like geo-tagging, alt tags, Schema markup, content or linkbuilding strategies as I wanted to try and keep the content non-technical. All good points though."

Thanks (0)