The 21st century is the era of the Internet and all the answers are just a Google search away. There has been research that states that 70% of the people looking for accountant services go on the internet to search for a nearby accountant. This means that if you are an accountant and even if you have great offerings, if you are not on the internet present in front of your future clients, then your firm is in danger. The traditional methods of word of mouth and print and media advertising are still available. But what wonders can a digital presence do for your business in much less effort and time can never be done by traditional modes of advertising in such a short period. This blog will help you understand the need of SEO for accountants.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization can provide you the chance to reach more and more customers and attract especially those clients who are looking for your offerings. SEO is the process through which you can improve the visibility of your website by making it stand first among search engine result pages. Businesses that want to grow exponentially both digitally and physically invest highly in SEO practices so that they can gain profit from both channels.
Need of SEO for Accountants
Accountants are professionals who perform multiple tasks like analyzing, recording, and finding meaning out of financial information. They are highly important to ensure the good financial health of organizations and individuals. The accounting industry has many different players with almost the same services offered making it very competitive. This makes the chance of any firm to stand out very difficult and finding a potential customer is also not easy. Using SEO is not a child’s play. And that is the reason many accountants lack the skill to create their online presence. And market themselves in online space. Most of the time, accountants are highly simple people who just want to work for known or word-of-mouth clients. So they also hesitate in promoting themselves. But, SEO provides these accountants a lot of opportunities to get to new customers through various ways, such as:
Higher website traffic:
SEO enables you to increase your website’s visibility among search results, as a result making your website visible to more and more potential audiences.
Better lead generation:
Through SEO usage, you can make your website visitor convert into a qualified lead by providing good quality content and steps to action.
More Brand Awareness:
By creating good quality informative content, your firm can be known as an industrial leader among its clients.
Economical Marketing:
In comparison to traditional forms of marketing, SEO and digital presence can prove to be more results providing marketing effort at less cost.
Let us learn about more features and how SEO can be a boon for the accounting industry.
Local SEO and its Positive Impact on Accountants
Accounting is one such industry where people’s word of mouth and trust play a huge role in increasing business. Your online presence is highly needed as an accountant. Along with you need your local customers to identify you as the best accountant in the area. And that is where local SEO efforts come into play. Local SEO for accountants provides you with the reach of your nearby potential clients. Certain factors need to be taken care of in local SEO efforts:
Knowing the local search behavior: If a potential client of yours searches for an accountant near them, they are searching for an accountant in their vicinity. With the help of local SEO, you can enhance your local presence in the search and you can be visible at the top once any potential client searches for you nearby.
Google Maps and Local Visibility: Google Maps and local searches work hand in hand and this is where if any potential client searches for an accountant near you, your name should pop up at the top of the Google Maps list in their area.
Google My Business Listing: Your first step in local SEO must always be to claim your Google My Business listing and verify it accordingly. GMB is a free-of-cost powerful tool that manages your online presence on Google Search and Maps. You can go to https://www.google.com/business/ and search for your company name. If it is there claim it and if not then create a new listing.
After claiming, you can verify by a phone call. Add your business name, phone number, address, certification of authenticity, services, and website URL to be visible. When you are adding the details make sure that you use the keywords related to accounting services searches in your locality or area. Adding pictures and videos will make the site look more real and professional.
It is a very good practice you showcase your positive reviews and client appreciation on your website. By asking your satisfied clients to leave a positive review about your offerings. These efforts will make your accounting firm look more credible and potential clients will eventually can attract potential clients easily.
Using Keywords and Content for Accountants:
SEO is a tool that keeps changing according to people’s usage and knowing about the changes in viewer’s preferences is important for creating content and getting more and more clients. This is why Keyword finding becomes so useful.
Keyword research in SEO for accountants is finding out specific terms, words, and sentences used by individuals. While searching for accountants or accounting services. Once you understand these keywords then you can build the content of your website according to them to gain more and more audience. Keyword research helps you reach near to your target user’s minds. So that you come out to be an expert in accounting terms in their minds.
Now, when you are searching for keywords look for both broad and long-tail keywords. Broad keywords are generic terms that relate to your entire service offering like tax services, accounting services, etc. Long-tail keywords on the other hand are more specific words or phrases. That are similar to specific services provided by your accounting firm. Long tail search volumes are low as compared to broad and thus chances of getting desirable results increase.
If you are working on local SEO, using location-relevant keywords is highly efficient.
As your keyword understanding is done, you should move towards building high-quality content for your website. Focus more on providing highly relevant and knowledgeable accounting content on which your visitors can rely. Write about topics on tax, bookkeeping best practices, regulatory changes, and industry standards to make your website look useful. Your website should always appear as a solution book for your target users. Using the target keywords enhances the visibility of your content.
Maximizing Impact through On page Efforts and Backlinks support:
Today, most of the current population have now taken mobile phones as their source of information. And that is why digital presence is the need of the hour for accounting services firms. Your website must be highly mobile-friendly and easily viewable on a mobile screen.
SEO rankings of a website are also determined by the speed the website is visible. If the loading time of your website is slow then it can frustrate user. And can move towards other websites leaving you with a lost lead. Google also looks for fast-appearing websites to rank high on their search engine pages.
Meta Descriptions and title tags are the pathfinders for your digital window on search engine result pages. These tags are small information landmarks that bring the viewers to your page. Your title tags must always be small but informative having the relevant keywords. Also, work towards enhancing the image visibility on your website by using relevant alt text illustrator.
Backlinks are the source of credibility itself. Because they provide the navigation from one site to your site as a favorable vote. The better the high-quality backlinks, the higher your website will appear on the search results. Earning backlinks from qualified, reputable, and trusted websites makes your website itself credible. Both in the eyes of Google and your target audience. Working with online communities and sending invites to reputed pages in accounting knowledge and business on the digital front can help you achieve backlinks from them.
Remember, applying these above SEO strategies with dynamic efforts and thorough knowledge of your accounting terms can make you reach to huge potential client base in a very short period. And can make your marketing jobs quite easy.