SEO for accountants, planned around the tax calendar
Demand for accountancy services is set by HMRC's deadlines. Pages need to be ranking weeks before those dates, which means the work happens while nobody is thinking about them.
Get your free auditThe diagnosis
Why accountancy websites rarely rank
Most practice sites list the same services in the same words as every other firm in town: accounts, tax, payroll, VAT. Nothing on the page tells Google, or a business owner, why this practice rather than the one round the corner. Search rewards specificity, and so do buyers.
The second problem is timing. Self assessment, Making Tax Digital and year end content published in the month of the deadline arrives after the searching has been done. It needs to be indexed and ranking well before each date.
The third is local trust. Most practices win most of their clients within driving distance, and the map results are decided by the Business Profile, reviews, and consistent details across the directories that list you, professional body directories included.
A January push is budgeted in the autumn, and the budget starts with one sum: what your practice can afford per enquiry.
Scope
What is included
Pages by client type
Sole traders, landlords, contractors, limited companies, or whichever sectors you actually serve. A page each, rather than one services page trying to rank for everything.
A content calendar built on deadlines
Self assessment, Making Tax Digital, year end and VAT content scheduled so it is live and indexed before the demand arrives, then refreshed each year rather than rewritten.
Technical audit and fixes
Crawl, indexing, site speed, internal links and schema, including AccountingService markup. The work that has to happen before anything else pays off.
Local search
A complete Business Profile, reviews requested at the right moment, and the same name, address and phone number everywhere you are listed.
Qualified, named authors
Tax content reviewed and attributed to a named, qualified accountant. Google's quality guidance expects real expertise on financial topics, and so do readers.
Reporting in enquiries
Enquiries by service and by month, set against the calendar, so you can see which deadline produced which clients. Rankings appear, but not as the headline.
Search intent
Searches worth ranking for
Illustrative examples rather than keyword data. Most are a deadline or an obligation, not a request for an accountant.
- accountant for landlords [your town]
- do I need to sign up for Making Tax Digital
- how much does an accountant charge for a self assessment
- what happens if I miss the self assessment deadline
- limited company accountant for contractors
- switching accountants part way through the year
What happens next
What happens after you get in touch
- Step 01
Audit
Your site, your rankings, your ad account and your analytics, and a written account of what is wrong. You get the report whether or not you hire me.
- Step 02
Agree the target
One number we are both working to, usually cost per enquiry or enquiries per month. Not sessions, not impressions, not rankings on their own.
- Step 03
Do the work
Technical fixes first, because content on a broken site does nothing. Then the pages and campaigns that go after the searches worth having.
- Step 04
Report monthly
What moved, why it moved, what happens next, and an honest note on anything that cannot be measured.
Straight answers
Common questions
- When should we start on self assessment content?
- It should be live and indexed by early October at the latest. Publishing in January is publishing into a decision that has already been made.
- Can a small practice compete with the national online accountants?
- Locally, yes. National firms rarely win the map results in your town, and rarely write about a particular client type in depth. A small practice that is visibly expert in two or three kinds of client can outrank them for the searches that matter to it.
- Should our prices be on the website?
- Something should be. A full price list commoditises you, but refusing to indicate anything loses enquiries to firms that will. A starting figure or a set of packages is usually the right middle ground.
- How long does SEO take for an accountancy practice?
- Technical fixes can show within weeks. Meaningful movement usually takes three to six months, and because demand is seasonal, starting in the right month matters as much as how long it runs.
- Will you write about tax changes?
- Yes, with a qualified member of your team checking anything technical before it goes live. Tax content that is wrong costs a practice more than having no content at all.
The longer read
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