SEO Guides, Tips & More!

As the new year starts it’s that time of year when accountants, bookkeepers and CPAs eagerly anticipate busy season which means tax season. For some, it’s the time of year when they connect with clients and prospects that have the greatest need for their services. While there is a captive audience it’s important to be as visible as possible with prospects that need your services. One way to gain visibility and get in front of prospects is through search engine optimization (SEO). It’s the process of positioning your website to appear on keyword specific search engine result pages (SERPs) on Google and other search engines. Although it may seem like a challenge to get your website to the front page of Google, it’s obtainable by consistently following a few tactics. When properly implemented, the benefit of SEO is that it will help to increase the number of inbound leads coming through the firm’s website. To help clients, prospects and others, we have provided a summary of SEO tactics which can be implemented to increase your visibility.

Accounting SEO Keywords

The first step in any effective SEO campaign is to identify the keyword terms that you want to target. For some firms it’s as simple as your geographical area and the term “accounting”, “CPA” or “enrolled agent”. If you are in Denver it might look like “Denver CPA”, “Denver accountant” or “Denver enrolled agent”. Having a strong presence on these general terms is important especially considering prospects may search these terms. However, the challenge is identifying the right keywords and it can be difficult to know which terms are most effective. In other words, how do you know the best terms to target for your firm?

This is a great question that needs to be considered. The good news is there are many tools you can use to evaluate keyword options. One such tool is called Google Trends and it offers insights not only into high performing terms but also how often they are searched throughout the year. To illustrate, below is a screen capture of a Google analysis of the term, “cpa tax accountant near me”. Note the graph shows the interest in the term over the last year. This is very useful information because it gives a sense of when searches are the highest (and it matches what one in the industry would expect – busy season and year-end).

This is a great question that needs to be considered. The good news is there are many tools you can use to evaluate keyword options. One such tool is called Google Trends and it offers insights not only into high performing terms but also how often they are searched throughout the year. To illustrate, below is a screen capture of a Google analysis of the term, “cpa tax accountant near me”. Note the graph shows the interest in the term over the last year. This is very useful information because it gives a sense of when searches are the highest (and it matches what one in the industry would expect – busy season and year-end.

There are also paid tools such as Moz and SEM Rush, but for those just starting, there are plenty of free tools available that should provide enough guidance to get you the needed information.

Ongoing SEO for CPA Firms

Once your keywords are identified, the next step is to integrate the terms across the website. Important areas include:

• Title Tags – Make sure you include up to three terms in the title tag. Note that using the name of the firm is usually not needed. This is especially true if the name of the firm is contained within the domain name.
• Description Tag – This is where you can provide a one sentence description of the content on the blog, service page or other parcel of content. It’s important to note that Google will take this information and display it on the SERP. Be sure to include the keyword term(s) in the description.
• Alt Image Text – Since search engines can’t “see” images like humans can, they rely on this text to tell them what the image is about. As a result, it’s important to provide information in this field. Be clever and don’t describe the image, rather use one of your target keywords for the page.
• Heading Tags – Did you know that search engines only skim content? It’s true! They rely on the section headings or heading tags (which include H1, H2, etc.) to understand the content on a page or blog post. As a result, it’s important to have keyword rich headings that align with your target keywords.
• Keyword Saturation – It’s important to use the keyword term(s) within the opening paragraph of the page content. While it might take some time to get used to writing in this way, it is helpful in moving your site up in the rankings.

Contact Us

SEO is a process that takes time, but that doesn’t mean an accounting or CPA firm can’t benefit from taking measured steps toward this goal. The best time to focus on SEO is before things get very busy and the opportunity passes you by. If you have questions about SEO or need assistance with optimizing your site, FlashPoint can help! For additional information call us at 954-621-8080 or click here for email. We have years of SEO and accounting industry experience and can help your SEO program succeed!