SEO for Accountants. More calls, More Leads, More Customers

Industry Growth Brings a Challenge

According to recent studies, the number of accountants/auditors employed in the U.S. currently stands around 1.32 million as of the FY 2021. While current demographics place the highest concentration of these professionals in the cities of Houston and New York, you can find accounting firms in just about any city of size today. Annually, the accounting industry is a $140 billion market as of 2022, a 6.3% increase over 2021.

With this huge size and growth, it is difficult, especially for smaller, single community-based accounting to compete, who don't have the big bucks for intensive advertising campaigns.

Let's begin with this: Why do firms seek out the services of an accounting firm?

• Bookkeeping Support: In this area we would include A/P (Accounts Payable), A/R (Accounts Receivable) and company payroll.
• Taxation: This of course includes the record-keeping and work associated with preparing tax documents, as well as ensuring that the proper amount of tax is being paid.
• Auditing: While bookkeeping support and taxation are typically recurring tasks performed by a firm on retainer, auditing is usually done by a firm independent from companies who do the day-to-day accounting work, to ensure objectivity and regulatory compliance.
• Specialized Services: This would be things like merger/acquisition support, international taxation and company valuations.

Have you ever heard of a YMYL site? Google has defined YMYL sites as any site where acting on information in that site could have a significant impact on their happiness, safety, finances or health. Many sites fall into the YMYL (short for "Your money or your life") category, such as medical practice sites, dentists and doctors, those dispensing medical advice or information, banking/finance sites, investment sites and the like.

And an accounting firm is certainly in the YMYL category, as accounting expertise (or the lack thereof) will surely impact client experiences.

So let's do a little bit of competitor analysis. Go to the search engines, do a little searching, and locate your site and make a note of its current ranking (position in the results listings). Now find some of your competitors. Where are their sites ranked compared to yours? If they are currently being ranked higher - especially much higher - there is a reason for that.

And for YMYL sites, Google has told us that E-A-T in site content is critical. They must be able to determine that your site content has been prepared by experts. EXPERTISE is the E in the E-A-T acronym. That's why your content should include written bios/summaries that provide proof that the writer is qualified to write on that topic.

1. Post regularly. Most companies fail in social media because they make a good start and get content out there, but soon the pressures of other priorities cause this activity to fall by the wayside. Most accounting firms have had better success by assigning the task of SM interactions to one or more staff who have the interest and time to keep it going.
2. As to content, don't bore people. For example, most people don't have an interest in recent changes to the specifics of auditing procedures, but they do have an interest in knowing what documentation they need to compile before the audit is conducted, so write about that. And any tips you can share on how to save money by cutting costs or lowering their taxes will surely find an audience anywhere.
3. Set aside time to interact with commenters. The third major mistake firms make when stepping out into the social media world is that they underestimate the time that will be needed to interact with their online audience. Some will even see this in a negative light - taking time away from other pressing needs.