One of the serious problems with any number of the approaches to organic SEO for accountants and tax firms is that they often neglect perhaps the most significant marketing development of the last 2-3 years…
GoogleMyBusiness.
Google’s unofficial motto used to be “Don’t be evil”. Hilariously, they stopped using that a few years ago (because apparently it’s totally fine to be evil now). And they are after worldwide internet domination. And they’re succeeding.
If, in your personal life, you’re doing what you can to avoid the big G, I understand — but as a business owner, you ignore them at your massive peril.
Because your GoogleMyBusiness profile (i.e. your maps listing, or the information box that shows up all over every Google product about your business) is now AS IMPORTANT as any website property you create. Some would say, even more. Any strategy for SEO for accountants and tax firms must include a management plan for this listing.
So if you need HELP with this, this is one of many things we do.
We place a special emphasis on this listing for our clients, simply because of its power. It’s not as “sexy” as creating snazzy websites (which we also do), and many web designers and website makers do NOT like to admit that this listing is so powerful, because it feels like if they did so, they couldn’t justify selling custom websites for high five figures and what not.
But we care most about results. And we’re not alone.
Below is a picture of a survey of marketing agencies like ours, across a broad spectrum of industries served…
Notice the jump from 2019 to 2020 — a 13% uptick, now indicating that over 3/4 of ALL smart marketers understand this reality.
So … if you are NOT on point with this, you are massively behind.
In fact, here are some major signs that you’re needing an update…
1) You haven’t CLAIMED your listing. Ouch, this is bad … but you wouldn’t be alone. Many businesses see that such a listing exists and subsequently believe that the job is done. Wrong-o. If you don’t claim it, Google will generate and run it without you. Which means that you don’t get to do ANY of the other things I’m about to tell you about.
Claiming it can be laborious — it often requires postal verification to weed out the scammers — but it is one of the most important things you can do for your marketing. And, of course, we handle all of that for our clients.
2) It isn’t keyword optimized. The vast majority of traffic to these listings comes from “discovery” searches, i.e. tax accountant near me or best tax professional in Los Angeles or Peoria tax professional, etc. etc. Which is why you need to have pertinent keywords sprinkled through your description to ensure the robots crawl your listing properly and you show up in these searches.
3) You’ve only claimed one “category”. There are a bunch of categories that might fit your business, and you can claim more than one.
4) No photos. Photos drive big engagement, and they are a significant ranking factor.
5) No content posting strategy. Did you know you can post status updates to your listing? No? These are also a significant ranking factor when it comes to SEO for accountants and tax firms, and they very much help. Updates disappear after one week’s time, but they indicate to the algorithms that you are an engaged, authoritative information source — which they like!
6) Your “NAP” is not consistent with the various other secondary listings across the interwebs. If you have changed your business name, moved offices, or changed your phone number, chances are good that there are a variety of other listings that the robots created for you on a bunch of NON google sites.
(This is also one of the primary things we “fix” for our clients. We can help you identify these problems during a free Leadflow Acceleration Session.)
7) No review generation strategy. Notice I said “strategy”. And hoping that reviews will just come rolling in ain’t a strategy.
8) No ongoing maintenance. Your GMB profile is something that should be checked, and regularly updated. It’s not something you can just “set and forget”.
9) You aren’t getting new business from it. GMB registers awesome analytics, which you can track, and identify how people are finding your listing.
If any of this rings true, it’s time for a refresh.
The “newsfeed gurus” don’t like to talk about this stuff, because it means REAL WORK. They’d much rather sell you on a coaching program and provide cloned squeeze funnels and charge you an arm and a leg to run advertising.
We love advertising, and we love coaching programs. We invest in both, as a business.
But for a professional services firm, optimizing that GMB profile is one of the BEST things you can do for your online presence.
Fix your online presence NOW, before the holiday madness begins and then soon thereafter tax season comes on us like a storm.