Attention Miami FL CPA Firms! Why Accountants Need to Take SEO Seriously
SEO? What’s That?
First thing’s first—what is SEO? Short for search engine optimization, SEO is a process that makes your site more attractive to search engines like Google. But how does the process work?
The inner technical aspects of search engines are actually pretty interesting. They’re definitely complex. And they’re also undeniably critical to understand if you want to improve your accounting practice’s online presence. To put it simply, search engine robots (often called spiders or crawlers) are constantly traversing the internet, collecting and indexing information from every single website.
Think of how you use a search engine when you’re trying to answer a question or find information. If you want to find, say, a great place to eat in your area, you might type a phrase like “best restaurants Miami” or “top places to eat near me.” Or you might even try a longer phrase such as “what is the best restaurant in Tampa.” And after you hit search, what do you see? A page of results that lists reviews and recommendations from various sites, websites for local restaurants, and maybe some social media profiles for them as well.
Well, when that same someone types in Miami FL CPA Firms, you’ll be nowhere to be found without SEO.
The goal of SEO is to put your site as near the top of one of these pages, also known as search engine results pages (SERPs, if you like technical jargon). You want to be close to the top of the page because you will be more likely to convert search engine users into paying clients. To rank well, the first thing you need to do is make search engines associate your site with certain keywords and search terms.
Studies show that 75% of search engine searches never even make it to the second page. This means you’ll be invisible on 3 out of 4 searches unless you make it to that first page. Without SEO, your accounting firm’s site will never rank well on search engines, and that’s by design on the parts of Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Linking Good Content
The major search engines want to provide their users with the most helpful information available. That means sifting through every instance of a search term and ranking the results using various criteria besides keyword search terms. Quality content and inbound links are two of these criteria, and they are intertwined—people won’t be able to find your quality content without links to it, and without quality content, good inbound links are not easy to come by.
Not only should the content be quality, but it needs to be relevant to your firm. If you’re able to drive people to your site, you’ll want them feeling as though they came to a site they were looking to find.
For example, if your blog posts are all about tax breaks for businesses when you’re a CPA only dealing with individual taxpayers, you might drive away some people. Not necessarily because the content is bad or the site if off-putting, but because it’s simply not the content they were hoping to find.
SEO can drive traffic to your site. And with good, relevant content, those spiders we talked about earlier that go crawling around the Internet will be able to find your site more easily and get you to that all-important first page of the search results.
Be Friendly to Your Fellow Human
As mentioned above, you can steer traffic away from your site with content that’s irrelevant to what you offer. But you can also drive traffic away if you aren’t personable.
As a CPA, people need to trust you. They need to know that they can hand you some of their most confidential information and that it’ll be in good hands. They want good advice. And most importantly, they want you to put more money in their pockets, right?
What better way to reel in a potential customer than to show them your personable traits? Show them that you care—that you love what you do and you have a desire to help them. It’ll make a world of a difference.
Post Often
This is the most problematic area for most professionals, simply due to time constraints. You became an Accountant to do just that: be an Accountant. You didn’t plan on, or even want to, become a social media expert. Or worry about SEO. You crunch numbers, you don’t write copy content.
But posting content often is quite possibly the most crucial part of this SEO plan. Without it, you’ll drop down the ranks of these search engines rapidly. Not only will competing websites with more frequent content go ahead of you, but websites of lower quality may do so. If you’ve worked hard to make your site look as professional as possible, you’ll need to work just as hard on its upkeep.
Local SEO, Reviews, Social Media
Outside links to your website are just as important as the content within your own site. External links directing to your site mean others are talking about you, and search engines find that important. If you’ve been a guest speaker at a conference or convention and can have them link your website on theirs, that’s huge! But mentions on other blogs within your community help as well.
On a more local scale, you also need to worry about your social media ranks and importance. Just like your website, your social networking links need to be current and engaging. Google My Business and Google+, as well as any other review sites, are great for local exposure. Yelp may be a great tool for you as an Accountant, but only if used properly.
ZenChange to the Rescue!
You’re probably thinking to yourself, How am I going to have time to do all this? Social media, blogs, SEO…I barely have enough time to read this blog!
You’re not alone. ZenChange has helped so many businesses just like yours. For an affordable rate, we can manage all these tasks that are essential to running a successful business in the 21st century. You do what you do best and let us do the rest.
During our onboarding call, we’ll discuss everything with you from how we’ll manage your social media to blog posts and even photo shoots if you find your headshots are getting a little outdated. We can be your one-stop-shop for everything marketing related.
Give us a call today at 305-702-0112. Let us ease the pain of moonlighting as your own personal marketing team.