Local Listings, Online Indentity, and Your CPA Website
Best practices for selling Professional Services like CPA and accounting firms over the web are somewhat different. Normally individuals who will purchase meat over the web from hundreds of miles away wouldn't consider hiring a CPA more than a fifteen minute drive away. This means commonly, when a prospect conducts an online search for a accounting practice, they are usually searching for a local practice. Conducting a search on "CPA" or "accounting firm" generates mostly useless results. Most likely a search on such a generic term will result in accounting organizations (like AICPA, NASBA and CPAAI), Wikipedia pages, directories, and maybe one or two McTax companies. More likely successful searches are returned with a location and service, such as "Philadelphia Accountant" or "Palm Beach FL accounting".
Google, Yahoo and Bing recognize such local searches. When they detect a local search, they will display the local listings higher then the organic listings. These listings are often to a great extent more relevant then the organic listings.
Local Directories
There are other local directories such as AT&T Yellowpages, City.com, dexknows.com, and numerous others. Many of them may already have a listing for your CPA firm.
The source data for your listings probably originated from a variety of third-party sources. There may very well be inconsistencies in your listing name, address and phone number. This potentially creates multiple representations of your company across the internet. This hinders the capability of the various local search engines to know which of your listings is the accurate identity.
Updating Your Contact Information
Change your address or phone number and update your CPA website? Unless you have control of your local directory listings, your current data may never be reflected in the directories. The online directories do their best to make sure they have accurate data. However, if you were at your old address for 10 years, then there may be hundreds of sites and directories that display your business at the old address. All that outdated information can tempt the major local directories into thinking that is the right data.
Going Mobile
As citizens are moving more and more toward a mobile work, they are relying on local data more and more. In fact 45% of local searches are performed by people who know the company they are searching for. These people rely on and expect to find your most current address, phone number and driving directions. They are relying less and less on finding it via your website.
Taking Control
For these reasons it is essential that your business controls and proactively manages your local business identity. The local search platforms will have increased confidence that they have valid and accurate business data. This also improves the local platforms ability to link other unique content such as social media and customer reviews.
It's a lot of work, but if you want to you can probably do this yourself. It's a lot of work, so plan your time appropriately. It's also very important to have a fast, reliable internet connection. It's not hard, but it is time-consuming. The first step is find your current listings. Use Google and Bing to get hold of every reference to your comapny you can find and make certain the information is correct. Once that's done search for as many new directories as you can and submit your business to them. Keep careful notes! If your business information changes in the future you'll need to be able to change your directory listings, too.
Numerous companies have "Local SEO" services that optimize and manage your accounting or CPA firm's local listings for you. Your business is submitted to and consistent across lots of directories, including all the main local search directories. The exact number of directories changes from service to service, but at my CPA website design company we submit to more than 100 of these "vertical indexes". Should you change your contact details your SEO should also make certain your information is updated in the local directories. A good service ensures new and existing customers alike are able to find your accounting firm.
Brian O'Connell is the CEO and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country's largest website design firms dedicated entirely to CPA website design. His firm presently provides websites for more than 4000 CPA and accounting firms.
