SEO for Accountants

How important is SEO for accountants and other financial services businesses?

Search engine optimisation, more commonly referred to as SEO, can be an invaluable marketing channel for any accountant or financial services provider in the UK. While referrals still play an essential role in client acquisition for many accountancy firms, the vast majority of people searching for financial services start by looking online.

But what exactly is SEO, and how does it benefit accountants and financial services businesses like yours?

Rather than being a single technique, SEO is a combination of many activities which, when properly combined, increase a website’s rankings and therefore, exposure in search engine results pages (SERPS). By gaining those all-important top spots in Google, and indeed other search engines, you can attract more traffic to your website.

If you have ever made a web search you’ll understand that the further down in the search engine results a site appears, the less likely you are to click that result and visit that website. It should come as no surprise that the top search positions in search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are highly coveted and that the competition to reach these positions is fierce, especially for the most lucrative search terms in any area of business.

To get to the top, you need specialist SEO experts. That’s where we come in.

What’s involved in SEO for accountants?

The precise SEO strategy and the techniques adopted to boost a site’s rankings can vary depending on the challenges faced by that particular business. That’s why we always start with a full audit and consultation to get to know your business, your target market, your competitors and of course, the goals you want to achieve.

There are hundreds of factors which all work together to help your site to rank and perform well in search engines – all of them analysed by algorithms – but to understand SEO in broad strokes, these factors can be broken down into three main categories:

1. On-Page SEO: The content that is published directly onto your website, such as blogs, news articles, thought-leadership pieces, instructional articles, category descriptions, and even images and videos all have their part to play in SEO.
2. Off-Page SEO: The content that gets published elsewhere on the web but is affiliated with your website, products and services, usually by a hyperlink back to your website. This might include local directory listings, PR, media coverage, or the results of any content marketing campaigns.
3. Technical SEO: The code that makes up your site is also incredibly important. Clean code will help your site’s performance in terms of pagespeed and overall user experience. When considering your code, it’s also important to keep in mind the overall structure you have created for your website and how intuitive and useful it is for both search algorithms and human users.

We are experts in all three of these areas of SEO.

Award-winning SEO services for accountants

Every search engine has sophisticated algorithms at its core, and these algorithms determine which websites rank for which keywords, and in what order. They are essentially a set of rules, guidelines and tests for your website, and they are continually evolving.

There was a time when you could take shortcuts with SEO, but this is no longer the case. To get to the top of the search results, you need to please these highly advanced algorithms by proving to them that you truly deserve to be there. Unlike human users, algorithms have to score everything on measurable metrics and data points. SEO is all about making your metrics more competitive, especially in relation to specific keywords or topics.

The good news for you is that you don’t need to worry about these metrics. All you need to do is keep delivering an excellent service to your clients. It’s our job to make sure Google can see that value and therefore rewards you appropriately. We have been helping websites to reach their optimal potential in search engines for many years.

Our award-winning SEO experts boast an in-depth understanding of search engine algorithms, and we use that knowledge to create and steer SEO campaigns for maximum effect.

Is SEO for financial services really that different from other types of SEO?

While search engine algorithms generally assess a website’s quality, and therefore its rankings, based on the same signals for all websites, there are some very unique peculiarities and nuances to doing SEO for accountants and financial services.

Firstly, all great SEO starts with a tailored strategy based on an understanding of the business behind the website, the intricacies of the services and products being offered, and the target clientele. We have done SEO for finance comparison websites, debt management companies, accountancy firms and financial advisors, covering a wide range of niche services. Every business, website and strategy was unique.

The complexity of financial products, instruments and services requires a level of familiarity and understanding that cannot be gained quickly. While we are by no means experts like you, our experience does enable us to confidently work with accountants, bookkeepers and financial advisors, even if you work within complex referral frameworks or offer niche services.

Secondly, a great deal of SEO is centred on the production of content. The complicated compliance and regulatory environment with financial services can be a minefield for the uninitiated. We have worked with small owner-managed accountancy firms as well as large SMEs with dedicated compliance teams, so we understand how and where we can fit into that architecture. By ensuring that we factor these things in when setting expectations and deadlines, we can tailor our strategy to get the best results.

Finally, there is a particular part of Google’s algorithm which has the sole purpose of making it harder to rank any content that could have a profound impact on a person’s life. Alongside the obvious things like medical advice, this includes anything related to finance, insurance, tax advice or, more broadly, money management. These websites are referred to by Google as “Your Money or Your Life “ websites (aka YMYL sites).

Building expertise, authority and trust in a way that Google and other search engines will respond to is therefore much trickier for accountants and financial services businesses. We have a good understanding of these subtle nuances, so we can help you to navigate the obstacle course, getting you to the top of the results for commercially-valuable terms much faster and more efficiently.

Tailored accountancy SEO and keyword strategy

Successful SEO campaigns for accountants must be built around a well-researched and robust list of target search phrases – realistic, commercially-valuable and highly likely to convert into enquiries.
These search phrases are more commonly referred to as ‘keywords’ and can be split into two categories; long-tail and short-tail.

‘Short-tail’ is generally used to describe any search phrase which represents a broad topic in a generic, top-level way. They have a high search volume and are very competitive. To give an example, ‘accountancy services’ is a short-tail keyword you may find in an accountants SEO campaign. As you can imagine, there will be heavy competition for this term.

‘Long-tail’ search phrases, on the other hand, often contain more words, are more specific, and are therefore usually less competitive. They target specific niche areas of a topic, and therefore fewer websites are relevant. The search volume does tend to be lower for a long-tail phrase, but there are many more long-tail phrases than there are short-tail phrases. Collectively, they represent a huge opportunity.

Some examples of long-tail search phrases might be “ir35 for contractors”, "bad credit mortgage advice", “financial advice for lotto winners” or “small business bookkeeping services”.

Crucially, you can rank for these long-tail phrases more easily due to the lower levels of competition. And the best part is, people searching long-tail phrases are also more likely to convert once they land on your site because you are targeting a very specific intent.

By focussing strategically on a combination of long-tail and short-tail terms, we can ensure that your SEO campaign generates ROI much sooner, but still targets the much blogger short-tail phrases in the long-term.

Local SEO for financial advisors, accountancy firms and bookkeepers

If you are selling services locally rather than nationally, you can drastically reduce your competition by focussing on localised terms such as "accountant stoke on trent" or "wealth management manchester".

We have researched and created effective and successful local SEO strategies for accountants and bookkeepers across the UK. We understand accountancy as an industry, and we know where the overlaps are with other professions such as law and business management. We carry out in-depth keyword research to find the terms that will give you the best return of investment and then ensure your website appears organically and in the Map results when potential clients search those phrases.

With a robust and tailored SEO strategy in place for your accountancy business, you can connect with prospective clients on their terms while showcasing your particular expertise and fostering trust and authority in your niche.

Call 01782 229900 to speak to one of our experts or click here to arrange a free consultation.