Accountant AI applications for reach and marketing
Key Takeaways
- You still need to do traditional SEO in this new age of AI in search.
- Research shows a growing trend toward zero-click search results, where people can find answers to their questions without clicking to a single website.
- Accountants need to adapt website and blog content to show up in the new AI overviews.
- It’s important to keep up with these ever-changing trends in search, or hire someone to do it for you.
Ranking on Google has historically been a product of on-website and offsite factors: Google Business Profile optimization, reviews, and other key local listings profiles play a large role in ranking in the Google Maps section.
None of that has changed. You as an accountant (tax professionals and bookkeepers too) still need to be optimizing all of those platforms to show up there.
But in this new age of AI search, there is a new section on search results pages that summarizes the answer to your question for you — without clicking to a single website.
Google has launched “AI Overviews” to provide AI-generated summaries in search results. These AI summaries now show up in almost half of search engine page results, including searches for an accountant. They look a little like this…
Who is the best accountant in Pittsburgh? ⬇️
How do I file a tax return?
But who is really relying on AI search results to answer these types of questions? Well, a lot of people actually…
- 80% of consumers rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches (Source: Neil Patel)
- 1 in 10 U.S. internet users now use generative AI first for an online search (Source: SEM Rush)
- ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users (Source: Fortune.com)
- 400+ million people use Meta AI each month (Source: Meta)
- Organic search engines, including Google, have declined in traffic (Source: SEM Rush)
This is, in fact, a real trend that we’re tracking so we can make real-time adjustments to our clients’ websites, local listings, and SEO.
Your website is going to play a big role in persuading AI platforms that you truly are the best accountant in your area. And your marketing needs to adjust from “search engine optimization” to “search everywhere optimization.” GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — (the fancy term for AI search) is the other term being used to describe this trend.
If you’re not adjusting to this new search reality, you need to start now.
The subject of HOW to make those adjustments is the subject of another note.
Marketing has always been an industry of constant change. But with the rapid development of AI and the subsequent AI search queries and dependence, it feels like things are speeding up.
And we are speeding to keep up. To not adapt is to disappear.
Ad Astra,
