SEO Guides, Tips & More!

When redesigning a website accounting marketers carefully consider the design, layout and sitemap, but they also need to gain the buy-in of key partners, shareholders and other stakeholders. Creating a site that accurately reflects the firm brand, is pleasing to the firm and contains the proper narrative is only half the job. Marketers need to also focus on building a website that will generate new business opportunities and attract prospective job candidates. To effectively accomplish this goal requires attention to be given to organic search engine optimization (SEO). There are specific considerations that should be made prior to launch which will have a positive impact on the site’s visibility with Google and other search engines. To help clients, prospects and others identify and understand the impact of these items, FlashPoint Marketing has provided a summary of on page SEO essentials below.

Key On-Page SEO Considerations:

• Meta Title – This is one of the core elements of on page SEO and provides information to site visitors and search engines about the content of the page. While many are tempted to simply copy the actual title of the page, it’s more effective to select three keyword terms that relate to the content on the page. For example, if the page is about 401k Audit Services, consider using 401k Audit, 401k Auditor Chicago (assuming your firm is located in Chicago) and Benefit Plan Audit Chicago. Since you are limited to 70 characters for meta titles you need to be selective about the terms you use. Contemplating terms that prospects who need your service may and may search for will yield the best results.
• Meta Description –This is another of the core elements of on page SEO. The meta description field is the description that appears on the search engine results page. Most content management systems (CMS) will provide a default description of the first 2 sentences of a page. You will want to have custom descriptions for every page on your website. This is essential because it’s the one opportunity Google gives you to share with users what’s on the page. In fact, these descriptions are so important that Google recently increased the number of characters you have to describe page content from 160 to 320. While they have their reasons for doing this, marketers can benefit by providing a keyword rich description that appeals to their target audience.
• Meta Keyword –There is a lot of debate in the SEO community about whether keywords are relevant to SEO anymore. In my opinion, I like to give search engines as much information as possible. As a result, if they allow me to provide keyword data, I am more than happy to do so. The good news is that populating this field should be rather simple because all you need to do is copy the data that appears in the meta title field here. Now you may be wondering why a duplication is necessary. We want to make it abundantly clear to search engines what the content is about. If there are different terms between the meta title, description and keyword fields then the necessary consistency is missing. In other words, we don’t want to leave it to Google to determine where and how the content should appear. Let’s take the initiative and do the work for them. Consistent application of keywords accomplishes this objective.
• Alt Text –Images are essential to a thorough website design and often create the look and feel needed that words simply cannot. Many are interested to discover that search engines can not “see” image files. As such, there is a field called alt text that allows marketers to tell the search engine the content of the image. Many make the mistake of simply describing the image, photo of the office, which is a miscalculation. Use this space to add keywords that are related to the content of the page. Using the former example, consider adding 401k Auditor Chicago – 401k Audit Chicago. The smart play is to keep keyword consistency across these areas which compels Google to position your content according to the desired keywords.

Taking the First Steps

If you are in the process of a website redesign or have not addressed SEO on your firm website, then following these steps will help to increase exposure and ranking. It’s important to note that prior to launching any on-page SEO efforts one should conduct comprehensive keyword research to identify where search trends dictate you should focus. If you have questions about on page SEO or need assistance with your website, FlashPoint Marketing can help. For additional information please call us at 954-621-8080 or click here to contact us. We look forward to speaking with you soon.