A practical guide to SEO for accountants

For any accounting firm, getting a steady stream of high-quality clients is the goal. But the old ways of doing things, like relying on referrals and local ads, just don't cut it anymore in a packed market. These days, your next client is probably starting their search on Google. If you're not showing up there, you're missing out on a huge opportunity.

This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) steps in. It’s not some complicated marketing term, but a practical way to get organic traffic and qualified leads coming to you. This guide will walk you through SEO without the jargon. We’ll cover the basics, from the technical stuff to creating content people actually want to read. We'll also touch on how tools like the eesel AI blog writer can help you with the one thing none of us have enough of: time.

What is SEO for accountants?

Simply put, SEO is about making your website easy for search engines like Google to understand. It’s not about gaming the system; it's about helping Google connect your expertise with the people who need it.

The aim isn't just to get random website visitors, but to attract the clients you actually want to work with. You achieve this by creating useful, trustworthy content that answers their questions. Your website can essentially become a 24/7 employee that fields questions and brings in new leads.

For accounting firms, SEO breaks down into two main types:

• Organic SEO: This focuses on improving your visibility for broader searches that aren't tied to a specific location. Think about topics like "tax deductions for small businesses" or "how to set up payroll." This helps establish you as an expert in your field.
• Local SEO: This is all about targeting clients in your city or region. Searches like "accountant in Chicago" or "bookkeeper near me" are good examples. Since a HubSpot report found that 46% of all Google searches are for local information, this is a must for any firm with a physical office or service area.

A good plan uses both. You want to attract clients in your local area while also building a reputation that extends much further. To clarify the distinction, this visual breaks down the two core components of a comprehensive SEO strategy.

The foundational pillars of an effective SEO strategy

A solid SEO plan isn't about one magic trick; it's built on three main parts. When your website works well technically, is optimized for the right topics, and has a strong local presence, you've got a great base. From there, your content can do the heavy lifting and start attracting the right clients.

Technical SEO: The non-negotiable basics

Technical SEO is all the work done behind the scenes to make sure search engines can find and understand your website without any issues. You don't have to be a web developer, but knowing the basics is important.

Here are the elements you can't really skip, based on Google's own advice:

• Website Speed & Core Web Vitals: We've all clicked away from a page that took too long to load. A slow website is frustrating for users and can hurt your rankings. Google uses metrics called Core Web Vitals to measure how quickly your pages load and become usable.
• Mobile-Friendliness: More people are searching for services on their phones than ever before. Your website needs to look good and function perfectly on any screen, from a large monitor to a small smartphone.
• Security (HTTPS): That little padlock you see next to a URL means the site is secure. It helps build trust with visitors and is a confirmed ranking factor for Google.
• Crawlability: For a deeper dive, technical SEO pros often use tools like Screaming Frog. It's a tool that crawls your site just like Google does, helping you find broken links, missing pages, or other errors that might be holding you back.

On-page SEO: Optimizing your website's content

On-page SEO is about fine-tuning the individual pages on your site to help them rank higher and pull in more of the right kind of traffic. It’s about making it obvious to both people and search engines what your page is about.

According to Google's SEO Starter Guide, these are the key things to focus on:

• Descriptive Title Links & Meta Descriptions: Your page title and meta description are what people see first in the search results. They act like a mini-ad for your page, so each one should be unique, clear, and interesting enough to earn a click.
• Logical Heading Structure (H1, H2, H3): Headings do more than just style your text. They create an outline for your content, making it easier for people to scan and for search engines to grasp the main points of your page.
• Helpful, People-First Content: This is the most important part. Ultimately, the best way to rank is to create high-quality and trustworthy content that genuinely helps the user with their problem or question.
• Internal Linking with Good Link Text: Linking between related pages on your own site is a great way to guide visitors and search engines. It helps spread authority around your site and shows how your content is connected. Just make sure to use descriptive text (like "read more about our small business tax services") instead of something generic like "click here."

Local SEO: Winning your immediate market

For most accounting firms, local clients are the core of the business. Google says your local search ranking depends on three main things: relevance, distance, and prominence. You can't change how far you are from someone searching, but you can influence the other two.

Here are the two most important things for improving your local visibility:

• Google Business Profile (GBP): This is basically your modern-day ad in the Yellow Pages, but much more effective. It's your number one tool for local SEO. Google recommends keeping information complete and current, including your address, phone number, hours, and services. Getting your business verified is the first step to showing up on the map.
• Online Reviews and Responses: Prominence is partly about how well-known your business is online. A consistent flow of positive reviews is a very strong signal. Responding to those reviews, both good and bad, is just as important. It shows you care about your clients and are engaged.

The biggest challenge in SEO: Proving your expertise with content

Getting the technical, on-page, and local stuff sorted is a huge step. But a perfect website with nothing on it is like an empty shop. To rank for the searches that bring in clients, you need to consistently show you know your stuff.

This is what Google's E-E-A-T guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) are all about. Since accounting advice falls into what Google calls a "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) topic, the standards are much higher. Google wants to be absolutely sure it's sending people to reliable sources.

And this is where most accountants hit a wall. You're an expert in finance, not a professional writer. The time it takes to research, write, and optimize a single blog post is time you could be spending with clients.

Content marketing is how you demonstrate E-E-A-T. By regularly publishing useful, detailed articles that answer your ideal clients' questions (like "how to choose between a sole trader vs limited company" or "quarterly tax deadlines for freelancers"), you build the authority that both Google and potential clients are looking for.

How the eesel AI blog writer can help with content creation

This is where tools can help bridge the gap. For example, the eesel AI blog writer was designed for this purpose.

It was created for experts who need to produce a lot of content without it sounding generic or taking up all their time. You just give it a keyword, and it generates a full, SEO-friendly blog post in a few minutes.

Its features include:

• In-depth research: The tool researches topics to create useful content that sounds human-written.
• Automatic assets: It also automatically adds things like charts and tables to make complex topics easier to understand and break up long blocks of text.
• Social proof integration: To give it a human touch, it can pull in relevant quotes and discussions from places like Reddit, showing you're tapped into what people are actually talking about.

We actually built it to solve this exact problem for ourselves. By using it, we took our own blog from 700 to over 750,000 impressions per day in just three months, after publishing over 1,000 posts. It's all about consistency and quality.

Key strategies for SEO for accountants

Once you understand the basics and have a way to handle the content creation, it's time to put a plan together. Here are some practical steps to get your firm's SEO on the right track.

Start with strategic keyword research

You can't create content that brings in clients if you don't know what they're searching for. Keyword research is about thinking like your potential clients to figure out the words and phrases they use.

Here are a few easy ways to get started:

• Use Google's auto-suggest: Start typing a phrase like "small business accounting" into Google and look at the suggestions that appear. These are actual searches people are making.
• Listen to your clients: Think about the questions you get asked all the time. "When is corporation tax due?" or "Can I deduct my home office?" Every one of these is a potential blog topic.
• Use professional SEO tools: For more detailed data, tools like Ahrefs (great for backlink information) and Semrush (a comprehensive suite with strong competitor analysis) can give you search volumes, difficulty scores, and tons of topic ideas.

  

Build a user-friendly website

Your website's design is about more than just looks; it's a key part of your SEO. A professional, clean, and easy-to-use site encourages visitors to stick around longer. This "dwell time" is a signal to Google that your site offers a good user experience, which can help your rankings.

A good page experience is a fundamental part of Google's ranking system. A clean design with clear calls-to-action (like "Schedule a Consultation") not only helps with SEO but also boosts your conversion rate, turning more visitors into leads.

Measure what matters

SEO isn't something you do once and then forget about. It's an ongoing effort that requires you to track what's working so you can improve. Thankfully, Google offers two fantastic (and free) tools for this.

You can measure the success of the agency's work by observing how your site's ranking in searches changes and whether or not you see an increase in organic traffic.

Reddit

• Google Search Console: This is your direct link to Google. It's the best source for seeing which keywords you rank for, how people find you, and if Google is running into any technical problems with your site.
• Google Analytics: While Search Console shows you what happens before someone clicks, Analytics shows you what happens after they arrive on your site. It helps you track your overall traffic, see your most popular pages, and understand how people are interacting with your content.

To see these strategies in action, the following video offers a complete walkthrough of how to rank an accounting firm's website, covering everything from keyword research to local SEO tactics.

This video offers a complete walkthrough of how to rank an accounting firm's website, covering everything from keyword research to local SEO tactics.

Getting started with SEO for accountants

SEO is a long game, but it’s crucial for growing your firm today. It all comes down to three things: a technically sound website, a good local profile, and a steady flow of expert content that proves you know your stuff.

We get it, that last part is the toughest for busy accountants. You have a firm to run and clients to help.

But not having enough time shouldn't stop your firm from growing. This is about working smarter. If you're curious, you can see for yourself how easy it is to create articles that attract the right clients and position you as an expert.

Try the eesel AI blog writer for free and get your first post ready in less than five minutes.