Low Hanging Fruit for Fixing Your CPA or Professional Services Firm’s Search Engine Rankings

Easiest SEO Tactics – According to Marketing Sherpa

One of the very first things we do when talking to accounting or professional services firms about their marketing program is a quick review of their website. We don’t look so much at how visually appealing their site is (although that’s important), we look at what they’re doing to get found first and rank high in search engines.

In particular, we look at the visible components of the site’s meta tags –page titles, descriptions and how effectively they use keywords in headlines and copy … or not. As you might expect, some firms “get it”, but a lot of firms are well behind the curve when it comes to SEO. Surprisingly, we’re seeing a number of small and mid-sized firms doing a good job at leveling the playing field in their market with smart SEO, and an even smarter decision to invest marketing dollars in SEO.

Marketing Sherpa published a terrific blog post a while back called “What is the Easiest Tactic to Improve SEO?”, that referenced findings from their 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition.

A summary of their findings are presented here:

According to the Report, “…marketers consider meta description tags to be among the easiest SEO tactics, while being about mid-range in effectiveness, suggesting a pretty good bank for the buck.”

As firms start to hone in on their 2013 marketing budget, “bank for the buck” should be one of the key filters in determining where and how to spend the budget. Putting resources into keyword research or getting assistance for helping develop title tags, meta descriptions and URL structures may just represent the right balance between effectiveness and difficulty when it comes to making budget allocation decisions.