Making your business succeed in today’s world is not as simple as it seems. It takes a lot to make the most out of every opportunity and make yourself visible on as many platforms as possible, getting all the potential clients that you can get not only based on your target demographics but also on the region in Australia that your business operates in.
Online SEO is the key aspect in optimising not only your website but also the pages that you have on social media. When it comes to accounting, your SEO needs to be tailored so that you use the relevant keywords for your field and those that get you on the first page of Google Search engine results pages.
What is Local SEO?
Search engines work with algorithms and one of the main features that can influence these algorithms is SEO, short for Search Engine Optimisation. If you are just starting out, using the right SEO can make it so that you will rise in organic searches and on the Map Pack.
If we think of SEO for Accounting we may think of examples such as Accounting in Geelong, Accountant near me, Accountant Australia, top 10 accountants and more. However, SEO is way more than that; it involves optimising all of your pages with relevant keywords, information, and posts. Remember that it takes time for that to happen and for SEO to give you results.
Why should you have it?
We live in a digital age and day by day this only becomes easier to see. In a digital age with mobile devices everywhere, more than 88% of searches for local businesses happen online. When people need an accountant they will be more likely to type it in their search engine and see what accountants pop up online.
If we keep that in mind, it becomes abundantly clear that we need to have a website, social media pages and an up-to-date Google My Business page. You’ll need to get people to choose you as their accountant and not the competition and for that to happen you’ll need to hook them.
Accountant Business Growth
When businesses have problems online, nine times out of ten the way to improve their Google Search engine ranking and get more traffic is to improve their SEO strategy. This is the first step. The next thing that we look at is to see if the accounting business relies just on its website or if they have more social media pages.
The problem that most business owners have is that they rely just on their website and then get confused when they do not get traffic and lose clients to competing accountants in their local area. It’s been documented that you need not rely on one platform.
Business Directories & Citations
A business directory is a citation website that is comprised of a number of different local businesses. These businesses are categorised based on local factors such as the type of business, the region, the city and more. To make your business seem legitimate you need to sign up your accounting business on as many business directories as possible.
The way to go when you sign up is to use relevant information about your business, a short description, the location, the type of service, phone number etcetera.
A number of relevant online examples of such directories that you can sign up are:
Keyword Research
The first step to learning and using SEO strategy to your advantage is starting the process of keyword research. You do not have to do this alone because there are tools online that help you optimise SEO strategy by giving you relevant results such as Ahrefs and the Google Search Console.
However, keyword research is more complicated than just that. For accounting firms that just started out you need to know that there are multiple types of keywords and they each target different things. The best thing about this is that you can use them to your advantage.
Navigational Keywords
A navigational keyword is a specific keyword used by potential clients to come up with very specific results. The algorithm will give them the most specific answer that it can draw up.
So far it sounds pretty vague since if we think about it logically every keyword gives you a specific result. Well, let’s apply it to an accounting business in Australia. Your client demographic might search for "I need an accountant" or "what is the phone number of X accountant in Geelong". When faced with these searches, the engine will give out the most relevant results. To use them to your advantage you will need to ensure you have all your contact information updated.
Informational Keywords
An informational keyword has a general format, that of "how-to". We see these keywords used almost everywhere in order to gain as much traffic. We even see articles that capitalise based on this keyword so that they can rank higher.
If we think about Accounting SEO we can offer you some examples that are seen as informational keywords:
- How to find an accountant
- How to prepare assets accounting
- How to assess accounting data Melbourne
- How to finalise accounting financial transactions Australia
The best way that you can make the most out of informational keywords is to incorporate them into blog posts, into your website on a FAQ page and also on your social media accounts.
Commercial Keywords
Commercial keywords, as the name implies, are a category of SEO keywords that indicated that a user wants to find a service that is currently available in his or her area. Whenever we look up a type of business online, we use similar search words like those that you can see for accounting in the following examples:
- Best accountant in my area
- Financial transaction accountant in Geelong
- 5-star accountants in my area
- Best tax accounting firm
The search engine sees these keywords and will offer up results that will narrow down your results to be as relevant as possible.
Transactional Keywords
Users that use, whether they are aware of it or not, a transactional keyword, want to get a particular service and they want to get it fast. While it may seem pretty similar to the commercial keyword, this category is more targeted towards accounting firms since it indicates that the client wants to make a transaction in a particular industry.
To exemplify such keywords, a potential client looking for an accountant online might type something along the lines of "available accountant", "best accountant in X", "accountant near me" and more. If you want to see what you can find out from the search engine, try and type out a keyword or two and see what are the most popular generated top results.
Knowing what people look for is going to be the biggest advantage that you can have in trying to get a leg up on the competition and come out on top, not only in your industry but also in search engine results.
Hiring Intent Keywords
If you understand SEO and use it so that you have business growth, you’ll need to start to implement hiring intent keywords into your website, your content and your regular posts. Hiring intent keywords are lost when used broadly targeted at the whole industry. Every accounting business will use basic keywords. If you specialise in different fields you can target your hiring intent keywords.
For instance, let’s say your business deals with the taxation process for other accounting firms. Being a niche in the industry, you can use keywords specific to business taxation in order to get more potential clients interested.
Research Intent Keywords
Research intent keywords won’t get you traffic and transactions but they can help get you a dedicated audience. A user will use a research intent keyword when they want to find out more about a specific process or topic. If you want to use this to your advantage, you should really think about investing in a technical writer that can provide content about your industry.
Your business will seem transparent and it is willing to explain a lot of aspects relating to accounting. Some examples of research intent keywords that people might look up are:
- Internal auditing process
- Financial accounting reports
- What is a public accountant
- Yearly taxes process Australia
On-Page SEO
SEO is not just about keywords and what you can do with them. Yes, keywords and keyword integration play a big part in optimising your content and making sure that it is indexed by search engines.
However, keywords won’t save your website, which is why on-page SEO is needed. On-page SEO deals with a number of things, including the improvement of loading speeds, conversion rate optimisation, schema markups, geotagging and much more. While these aspects don’t seem at first to have a big impact, if used right they will show improvements over time. Even if you make all the needed changes today, SEO needs time to show results, but once those results start to show you will know that you have made the right choice.
Hyper-Local SEO
Another type of SEO that you might want to start thinking about is Hyper-Local SEO. This category of SEO makes use of business directories and business citations in order to boost a website’s ranking. Hyper-Local SEO also has a lot to do with social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others.
The best way to include Hyper-Local SEO is to include citations. We discussed this already before when we talked about citation sites that you can use. The problem with using citation sites is that the work is hard and, if done by one person, it can have small errors. When dealing with an algorithm you need to be strict, concise, and use the same citation. This will show potential clients that you are consistent and that your business is legit.
While accountancy does not seem like a competitive field in Australia, it most certainly is and an online presence needs to be finely tuned to make an impact.
You need an Online Presence
You might think that we are trying to forcefully sell you something but in reality, we are not. Every business must have an online presence today in order to show that they are relevant. Ads in newspapers and other conventional forms of media will not get you as much publicity and visibility as will a dedicated website and active platforms on social media.
An online presence cannot be crafted overnight and it takes a team of professionals to do the right thing based on your needs and expectations. If you want to organically boost your results you need to be active online to trump the competition.
Accounting presence on Forums
Forums may seem like a thing of the past but they are alive and well. Think of the time when you looked up a question and Quora or Reddit popped up. People rely on these forums because they offer valid responses and they seem friendly like there is a real human connection being formed between the one who asks and the one who responds to the question.
For accounting, what you might want to do is create an account on these websites and start to answer questions, especially if the people who ask them are Australian. It is a stepping stone to having an online presence.
Use Google My Business
If you want to seem like a legit business you will need to create a Google My Business page. It is perhaps the clearest listing and most reliable one that your business will ever have. When people look up a company, the GMB page will pop up in the upper right corner.
If the GMB page is verified then this will let potential clients know that you are a legitimate business. How can you get your GMB verified? The best way to go about it is, to be honest, use the right address and the right contact information and not shy away from adding pictures and also links to your socials. If by some mistake you have more than one GMB, merge them.
Instagram for your Accounting Business
Instagram is not just for vacation pictures or for influencer accounts. It is a powerful social media platform that is slowly becoming bigger than Facebook. Instagram offers business profiles as well and it will be great if you created a profile on Instagram as well.
On the one hand, you can benefit from getting into direct contact with your clients. They can comment on your posts, send you private messages, reply to your stories and even use your hashtags. Speaking of hashtags, you might benefit from time from branded keyword searches.
Have a Facebook Page
Having a Facebook Business page is by now one of the first things that every business owner will do after they start out. However, where most people fail is that they do not update their page constantly and they also don’t finish their profiles. By not doing these things you show potential clients that you are not trustworthy and that your business may not be legitimate.
Facebook has so much to offer. You can get visibility by letting people review your business and you can also use Facebook ads in order to market your business to your targeted demographic in your local area.
Add your Business Details
If you want to build the right online presence you need to have the same listed NAP (Name, Address, Place) on every one of your accounts, pages, citations, directories, and listings. By doing this you let potential clients know that you know how to use the algorithm to your advantage.
The first place where you will need to check your NAP is your Google My Business page. It won’t hurt to check your NAP online and spot any mistakes that have been made and correct them.
Use relevant imagery
An image is a powerful tool through which you can suggest and show so much without having to say anything. Think about what you can do and what sense you can instil into your audience if you use the right images not only on your website but also on your social media platforms.
Be professional and use relevant images. The first idea that might come to mind is to take pictures of your office. This is great, especially if you include images of the place where you consult with clients. It lets people know what they can expect. But do not limit yourself to that and most importantly, do not use other images for your own business.
Include your reviews
Statistics show that around 90% per cent of customers first look at a business’ reviews before they consider learning more about it and even making a purchase. If you want to stay on top of the game, you should really consider including reviews not only on your website but also on your GMB page and even on your Facebook page.
Testimonials are a great help for any small firm and, even in a competitive field like accounting, these reviews can make a difference.
Be Featured on Google Maps
If you want to have organic business growth over time, you need to seriously think about being featured on Google Maps. And make sure to use your real location. The best way to get features is to integrate relevant keywords such as "accounting" "accountant", "government accounting", "tax filing" and more.
By integrating these keywords into your citation you will indicate to the algorithm that you have relevant details and use the same address, which can help boost your chances to be featured on Google Maps.
The biggest advice that we can give you is not to use the wrong address. Clients will use Google Street View to see the exact location of your office or firm and, if the location is fictive, being featured did not do you any good. The user is more likely to go to your competitor rather than try and find out your real address.
Let’s start the work on your accounting website
Once we know the theory behind SEO, it is time that we start to implement it. However, as we briefly mentioned before, it does take time. Based on the results that you want to have it can take anywhere from a couple of months up to a year.
The work that we do looks at organic growth that will increase both organic and mechanic results while also optimising your content online. It takes work to come up with regular content but our team of SEO specialists can do that.
The Homepage is important
The first thing that we need to work on in most cases is the homepage. It is the first thing that your client sees when going on your website and this is why you need to think of it as a first impression.
The way that we work with this is to work with the keywords that relate to your specific to your business. We work on the title tag and on the small description of your website.
Add Service Pages
A service page includes all the needed details that your client will need to know about the services that you or your business can offer them.
The right way to go about this is to include these service pages on your home page and organise the information with the right title(s). There are plenty of ways to go about this and they all depend on the client but the end goal is to create a smooth transition between the homepage and the service page.
Content Optimisation
The next thing that needs to be looked at is content optimisation. If you do not know exactly what to use, Google has a tool available, Google’s Keyword Planner, which will give you a list of relevant keywords that you can then use and integrate these keywords into your content pages in order for them to rank as high as possible in search engine results.
Add Valuable Information
If you want your accounting firm to be different from the rest then what you will need to do is put time and effort and deliver valuable content that will set you apart from other accountants in your area. The best way to do this is to have dedicated articles that you post regularly. Here you can discuss anything relating to your field.
Feel free to use as many details as needed. This will let potential customers know that you are not afraid to discuss your work and that you want to be transparent.
Have a mobile version of your website
Statistics show that around 58% of all searches alone are made on mobile devices. Many businesses overlook having a mobile-friendly version of their website and this can hurt their organic traffic. A desktop version on a mobile device is difficult to use.
If you do not know if your website is mobile-friendly, Google has another tool to help you with that, a test where you can see how your website performs.
Page Loading speeds
If a page does not load within three seconds a majority of users will bounce to another. If they bounce they are unlikely to return to your page and choose one of your competitors instead.
Having small loading speeds is crucial. Our goal here is to keep any potential clients interested and make them use your business. To know where your website stands test needs to be taken. There are three popular options out there: GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Pingdom.
Include Internal Links
Internal links are your biggest ally when you are writing a blog post or an article about something related to your business. Their role is not to boost your ranking but to show that you do your research and that you credit the authoritative sources that you have used.
While it won’t boost your position in search engine rankings, internal links can help you show algorithms that you work within a similar field to those internal links that you choose. If you want to you can even link your own pages when needed.
Get multimedia content
If there is one thing that people overlook, that is multimedia content and the biggest culprit out of them all is video. By 2020 statistics show that around 82% of searches will be linked to a video. And you need to capitalise on that. The way to go about this is to integrate and credit interesting clips related to accounting or even make some of your own and index them on your pages.
If you don’t feel like showing your face you can always create a small podcast since it is also starting to become popular. These are optional and not for everyone but including multimedia content may be a better step for a bigger your business than it might for someone just starting out.