Accounting and financial professionals have not prioritized website optimization in their standard marketing strategy. In the Tri-Cities, a basic search for “accountants” pulled several pages of Google Business results, but of those results, less than 8 businesses had a decent website. Fewer than 5 businesses had an above-average website design and functionality. Many business listings either were missing a connection to their website or didn’t have one at all. This is a tremendous missed opportunity.
1. Visibility in Search Results
Having a website provides search engines with material to index and rank. The more useful information provided to search engines, the better your ranking will be in search results. Having a website that is designed with SEO in mind, and content that is persuasive, informative, and user-formatted will help your website rank visibly in search results.
2. Visibility in Google Business Results
One search for accountants in the Tri-Cities pulled several pages of results. Like search results, business listings are also competing for visibility. Visitors and potential customers will explore your website from the Google Business listing, Bing, or Yahoo as well, and a badly designed or less functional website will result in those potential customers leaving your website.
3. Credibility and Authority
An optimized website establishes credibility with your customers. It also tells search engines how credible and authoritative you are on a subject. Search engines, such as Google, look at the authority of your content and links. This directly impacts how well your website ranks in search results and is part of how you optimize your website.
4. Ranking for Multiple Keywords
Long-form keywords are the focus of SEO strategies. Instead of one or two-word search queries, people are searching more specifically. Asking questions and phrase searches are long-form search queries.
For accounting and finance, it is difficult to compete for high rankings just for “accountants”. Incorporating long-form keywords is part of optimizing your site. Strategies to rank for long-form keywords include blog posts, landing pages, or strategic website content on the home and services pages.
5. Positive User Experience
A truly optimized website will give the user a positive experience with ease. Websites that don’t give a positive user experience will result in more visitors leaving your website. Looking at your website from the point of view of your customers can highlight areas that could be improved, such as navigation to pages, organization of information, and design layout. Ultimately, your website is for visitors and needs to built and organized for visitors. Designing your website for visitors is part of optimization and engaging potential customers.
Optimizing your website is more than just installing a plugin and writing content. It is a strategy overlapping with SEO and user experience. Between content that potential customers will engage with and search engines will use to making your website a positive experience, there is a clear difference between a website that has had the time put in for optimization and a website that hasn’t.
Contact us to schedule a consultation and evaluation of your website to figure out the plan to get your website optimized and user ready.