Local SEO Strategies for your accountancy firm
Here at Whitefish Marketing, we often wax lyrical about local SEO and its importance in terms of SEO strategies for accountants. If you’ve read our post on the value of local SEO for accountants you’ll already know why it’s such a vital part of any online marketing strategy. Research has shown that a huge 82% of consumers turn to local search to seek out services they require – which means your presence in the search results for terms that include your locations and those nearby is all but essential if your accounting firm is trying to attract new clients.
Although many businesses can offer their services remotely now thanks to the development of cloud accounting and communication tools like Zoom, clients often look for services that are close to home. This is because they like to have the security of knowing that they can arrange face-to-face meetings whenever they need to. In addition, local businesses often have connections to other companies in the area that may be of service to the client, so it’s helpful for them to know introductions can be made where necessary.
With all that in mind, let’s take a look at some key local SEO strategies that can help your accounting firm to reach potential clients in and around your area.
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Conduct keyword research
Keyword research is at the heart of a local SEO strategy, as it tells you what your audience is searching for – phrases such as “accounting firm near me” or “accountants Kent”, for example. You can then optimise your content to reflect these queries. Once you have a few ideas, think about the key services that your audience might be looking for and add these terms to your list. You might include “payroll services in Kent”, for example, or “tax return accountant in Canterbury”.
You may also want to add a few question terms to your list. Would your clients be likely to search for, “What are the Capital Gains Tax rates 2022?” for example? You can check average monthly search volumes for queries like this on a free keyword tool online. Bear in mind that if you’re including a location, the volumes will be low – but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth optimising for.
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Give your site an overhaul
Armed with your keyword research, you can review your existing website content to ensure specific keywords are properly assigned to each page. This is important to ensure your pages don’t all end up containing the same terms. This can be confusing for Google, and may result in users getting directed to pages that aren’t relevant for their query, which will obviously create an unfavourable experience.
In addition to going through your content, carrying out an SEO technical audit can be helpful. This looks at things like site speed, broken links and indexation to ensure there’s nothing technical that is hindering the site from being found and indexed by the search engines. A technical audit requires some specialist knowledge, so it’s a good idea to enlist the help of a marketing agency for accountancy firms for this.
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Set up a Google Business Profile
If you haven’t done so already, setting up a Google Business Profile is a quick win that can really help your local SEO efforts. It isn’t time consuming to complete the basics, and it gives you immediate exposure in your local area. Of course, you’ll get the most benefit from your listing if you optimise it, so adding things like images of your premises and soliciting reviews from clients means your profile is likely to be displayed more prominently than those of your competitors. You can check out our in-depth guide to optimising your Google Business Profile to make the most of the listing, but as a starting point you’ll want to ensure you include contact details, opening hours, and a brief description of your company and what its services are.
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Make use of Google Posts
Your Google Business Profile offers the capacity for you to add posts, which can help you engage and communicate with your audience. Use these to make announcements or promote services in a timely manner (such as promoting tax services ahead of the annual January 31 deadline). Google Posts is also a good place to link to relevant blog posts that might explain changes to tax regulations or other financial matters that are time sensitive.
Analysis has shown that discounts and service related posts bring a higher conversion rate than other posts, so keep this in mind when choosing what content to add to your Google Posts. You’ll also want to ensure your Google Posts are concise and to the point, since there’s a 1500-character limit.
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Create local landing pages
Creating landing pages specifically for local search terms can help to boost your visibility in the search engine results. This doesn’t mean you have to duplicate every page on your website for specific locations – in fact you definitely shouldn’t do this – but it can be useful to have, for example, ‘contact us’ pages that are optimised for different locations. These need not be included within the main navigation of the site if you only have one office, but would still like to target nearby areas; rather, they can be linked to from content that you create for external sites, or from blog posts that you create.
Local landing pages can be created to accompany PPC campaigns too. The page would only be accessible to users clicking on your chosen ads for their area, and this gives you the opportunity to create highly tailored content for all the places you want to target.
Your landing page can include terms such as “accountants near Bromley”, for example, with a dynamic map and a strong call to action. You might even want to include a contact form to make it easy for users to get in touch.
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Engage in local link building
Link building is essentially about getting your website’s URL onto other reputable websites. These then act as signals of authority to the search engines, telling them that your content is relevant and of a high quality. For local SEO, seek out links that are from local businesses. This enables Google to map your presence in your specific locality and rank your website accordingly.
Link building can be achieved in a variety of ways. You can contact other businesses in your area to see if they are interested in featuring a guest post on their blog that contains a link back to your site. The content of the post should be relevant and of value to the host company’s audience, and you should use a carefully considered keyword that directs readers to a related page.
Another way to create links back to your site is by providing local news outlets with PR content that includes a link. News websites often have a high domain authority, so the links will carry more weight than, say, those from a little-known start-up.
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Utilise directory listings
There was a time when part of link building involved submitting your site to hundreds of directories in order to get a large quantity of backlinks. Google put a stop to this some years ago, however, and turned its focus onto the quality of links instead.
That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t utilise relevant directories though. Our post on web directories you’ll still want to use for local SEO can help with where to add your site, giving you suggestions for web directories that still offer value to your business if you place a listing there.
Of course, periodically reviewing your web directory listings is a good idea, particularly if your business is growing. The information needs to be up to date in order to stay relevant for users, so if you move premises or open a new office, ensure you’ve made the necessary amendments on your submissions.
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Local reviews
Any client that is looking to engage the services of a provider wants to know that the company they’re choosing is reputable. With that in mind, they’re going to be looking online for reviews of your business, and if they can’t find any, the chances of them engaging you over a competitor that has positive reviews falls off a cliff.
According to a local consumer survey conducted in January 2022, 67% of respondents said they would consider leaving a review for a positive experience. That’s not saying they’d definitely write a positive review, they’d consider writing a review. So you can’t just rely on your happy customers to sing your praises online – you have to actively solicit reviews.
This typically means contacting your clients via email to ask them to leave a positive review on your Google Business Profile, or on another trusted review site such as Feefo or Trustpilot. And since clients are always busy, you’ll probably have to follow up once or twice before they get around to leaving the feedback.
If you do happen to get a negative review, it’s important to respond promptly and try to fix the issue. In the survey mentioned above, 57% of consumers said they would be ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ likely to use a business that doesn’t respond to reviews. That means that reviews aren’t simply a way of obtaining social proof, they’re also a chance to showcase the quality of your customer service by responding when necessary.
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Add location terms to your meta data
Adding your location terms to the meta data on your website can help it to rank in the search results for location-based terms. If you only have one or two offices, you can use the names of the nearest town or city in your meta description or meta title; if you have several offices across three counties, for example, you should add the names of the counties rather than trying to include five or six towns.
Using a location term in your meta titles is another way to tell the search engines that you’re local to a specific area and boosts your chances of appearing in the results for relevant local searches. You can then add compelling text to your meta description that will help to hook potential clients in – and it doesn’t hurt to add similar location keywords here too. You might put ‘serving clients in the South East’ or ‘working with businesses across Kent and Sussex’.
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Create blog content with a local focus
In addition to creating location-specific ‘contact us’ pages and building links from other reputable local businesses, you can boost your local SEO efforts by creating blog content that refers to your activity in the area. A representative from your firm may have given a presentation at a nearby university or college, for example, or you might get involved with charitable events.
Posting about this on your blog not only strengthens your business as a presence within the wider community, it also provides further opportunities to tell Google about your location in relation to other organisations.
Get help with your local SEO
While some local SEO tasks can be fairly straightforward to complete yourself, other elements require more specialist knowledge, or are too time consuming to carry out when you have several other things to juggle. With that in mind, it can be highly beneficial to engage an agency that has experience with providing SEO for accountants.
Here at Whitefish Marketing, we specialise in digital marketing for accountants, and have extensive experience with helping businesses increase their local online exposure. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help your accounting firm stand out above the competition.
