In this post, I’ll be discussing SEO for bookkeepers to help you drive traffic to your website. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy to help you generate inbound leads.
While it’s a long-term strategy that can take months to deliver results, it automatically targets your ideal clients and allows Google to act as your salesperson 24/7.
3 Steps to SEO Success for Bookkeepers
- Research and choose the best keywords
- Optimize your content around keywords
- Build domain authority with backlinks
1. Keyword Research – The Foundation of SEO
Many people believe that websites rank in Google search engines. But the truth is that Google search result rankings are per page, not per website. So, each page of your website is listed and ranked individually.
When researching keywords you want your bookkeeping website pages to rank for, the best practice is to look for high-converting keywords with low competition. This will help you avoid wasting time creating content around keywords that no one searches for or is too dominated by many other bookkeeping businesses.
This is why it is important to have a clearly defined niche, such as “bookkeeping for photographers”.
Trying to rank for generic keywords such as “bookkeeping for small businesses” or “bookkeeping for service providers/entrepreneurs” is too broad and has high competition.
At the time of writing, the keyword “bookkeeping for small businesses” is dominated by paid ads by bookkeeping and accounting software companies like Quickbooks Online.
3 Steps for keyword research
- Brainstorm 50-70 keywords that are relevant to your niche
- Narrow down your list of keywords by using an SEO tool
- Finalize your keyword selection by reviewing your competition
2. Content Optimization – On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is all about optimizing your website content around your keywords. This allows Google to recommend your web page when someone searches for your services.
6 Content Optimization Tips
- Optimize URL’s
- Write title tags
- Write meta descriptions
- Optimize heading tags and body text
- Optimize images
- Interlink between posts/pages
3. Domain Authority Link Building – Off-Page SEO
When a website relevant to your niche links to your website, Google sees this as a positive recommendation or badge of trust that increases your domain authority online. You can build your domain authority in two ways:
- Writing and publishing relevant blog posts
- Getting featured in others’ blog posts
Just be sure to avoid buying links – this link-building strategy is penalized by Google.
Want to learn more about organic SEO? Grab my free SEO guide here.
