An accounting firm is searched hardest from January to April and judged on its reviews all year. We build the tax preparation pages that win the season, the bookkeeping, payroll and advisory pages that win the business client, and the map pack position and review profile that make a firm the one a new client calls.
The individual and business tax preparation pages, the profile and the reviews are built before the season, so the firm is already ranking when the W-2s arrive. January is for the ads, not for starting the SEO.
Bookkeeping, payroll, sales tax, entity formation, CFO services and industry pages for the trades and practices the firm serves are the searches worth the most, and they are made in every month. Each gets a page written for the owner making it.
"CPA near me" is a map pack search. The profile with the right categories, the partners with photos, the hours that change in season, and reviews that mention the service put the firm in the three-pack across its circle.
A review that says "handled our S-corp election and payroll" brings the next business client. The request goes out after filing or at the close of the engagement, from the accountant the client knows, with a direct link.
A firm’s site usually offers "tax, accounting and advisory services" to everyone, which ranks for no one. The campaign writes pages for the clients the firm actually wants: the contractor who needs job costing and payroll, the dental practice that needs entity planning, the restaurant group that needs sales tax and tip reporting, the family with a rental property, the retiree with a complicated return. Each page speaks that client’s language, names the services in the order they ask about them, and carries the partner who handles them. Those pages rank for the industry and service searches the firm’s competitors never wrote, and they convert because the reader recognises their own situation.
Behind them, the technical work keeps the site fast, marks the firm up as an accounting service with its partners and office, and keeps the service pages, the industry pages and the tax tips from competing with each other.
Because the small business and professional services work we have done since 2015 means the season, the client types and the review questions are already familiar, and because the strategist, the writers, the profile manager and the ad manager sit in one office in Montgomeryville. Every keyword is checked weekly in SEOApp, the tracker we built, and the monthly report shows consultation requests and new-client calls from the firm’s own data rather than a screenshot. Every agreement is month to month.
Accounting has the sharpest season in local search. "Tax preparation near me" and "CPA for small business" climb in January, peak before the April deadline and fall off a cliff. A firm that starts its SEO in January is a season late, because the pages, the profile and the reviews that win February have to be in place by the fall. The rest of the year belongs to bookkeeping, payroll, business formation and advisory searches, which are smaller and far more valuable per client.
Live reviews pulled straight from both our Google Business Profiles, refreshed daily.
SEO Locale has been handling the marketing for our company, Sector Bay Laundry, for about 6 months. We moved on from another company, and the work ethic and responsiveness have been a night and day difference. I can't point out one specific person because the entire team as…
SEO Locale has been great in every way! Very responsive and certainly willing and able to help in anything related to our site, seo and etc. You will not be disappointed, they are a great team to add as a vendor for all businesses.
Amazing team. SEO Locale has helped transform our digital presence and continues to deliver real, measurable results. They’re responsive, collaborative, and genuinely care about our growth. Highly recommend for anyone looking to level up their marketing.
SEO Locale has been incredible to work with. We had been using another company before them, and the results were very poor so partnering with SEO Locale was a breath of fresh air. From day one the difference in communication, professionalism, and results was obvious. Nick and…
We’ve been working with SEO Locale for over a year now, and the impact has been great. They took the time to understand our niche in exotic car exhausts and built an SEO strategy that fits our brand perfectly. We’ve seen stronger organic traffic, better keyword rankings, and…
I had a really good impression of Nick and the team but unfortunately they significantly underdelivered on what was promised. With two days left after our first month all we had received was a list of keywords and a few articles that were almost certainly AI generated, about 20%…
What partners ask before they hire an agency.
The fall. Rankings take months to build, so pages published in September are ranking by January. Starting in January means paid search carries this season while the SEO builds for the next one, which is still worth doing, but a year later than it could have been.
Yes, and that is where the better return is. Business searches, bookkeeping, payroll, entity formation, industry-specific accounting and advisory, are smaller, less competitive and worth far more per client. The campaign can be weighted entirely toward them if the firm wants, with the tax pages kept only for the clients worth taking.
Ask after filing or at the close of an engagement, from the accountant the client knows, by email or text with a direct link. Keep it within your state board’s rules and never offer anything for it. Clients who have been with a firm for years will leave a review if the request is easy; most firms simply never ask.
Yes. "CPA near me" and "accountant in [town]" are map pack searches, and the three-pack is decided by the profile, the reviews and the distance. A complete profile with the partners, the seasonal hours and a growing review count is the fastest ranking gain most firms have available.
Map pack gains from the profile work show in two to three months. Service and industry pages take four to eight months to rank. Paid search brings consultation requests as soon as the campaign is live, which is why it carries the first tax season. The audit gives a timeline for your market.
No. Every agreement is month to month. The plan is explained before you pay for it, and you can stop when the work stops being worth it.
The people who would run your firm’s campaign, in their own words — how we win the tax season and the business searches behind it.
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From January to April the searches are individual: "tax preparation near me", "CPA for self-employed", "tax accountant in [town]". They are won in the map pack through Local SEO and Google Business Profile SEO, with the profile’s categories, seasonal hours and reviews doing most of the work, and by the tax preparation pages that answer the questions about fees, documents and turnaround. The rest of the year the searches are business: "bookkeeping services for contractors", "payroll for small business", "CPA for dental practice", "fractional CFO". These are smaller, higher-value and much less competitive, and they are won by the industry and service pages written for the owner making the search.
Rankings take months, so the tax season pages are written and published by September, the profile is complete by October, and the review push runs after the extension deadline. A firm that is ranking in November is ranking in February.
The free audit, reviewed by a person, comes first: where the firm sits for the tax terms and the business terms in its town and the industries it serves, who sits above it, what their pages and profiles carry that yours do not, and whether the consultation request works on a phone. The profile and citations are fixed in the first month. The tax preparation and core business pages are written next, with the partners on them. Industry pages and a tax question library follow, and the review request is set up to go out after filing and at the close of each engagement.
Firms moving from compliance work to advisory need the site to say so. CFO services, exit planning and business valuation are searched by owners who research for months, and a page that explains the engagement and shows the partner behind it starts that relationship long before the first call.
January to April is when the tax terms are worth buying. Paid Advertising runs on the exact preparation and town terms with a landing page each, the budget concentrated in the eight weeks that matter, and every consultation request tracked. The rest of the year the budget moves to the business terms, which cost less and bring the clients that stay for a decade.
Reputation Management keeps the reviews growing and answered, because a prospective business client reads them before the first meeting. For the firms that grow, the pattern is consistent: own the home town for the tax terms, add an industry page at a time for the business clients, and add the advisory pages when the partners are ready to sell the work. SEO starts at $500 a month and there is no contract.
A new client finds a CPA on a map and checks the reviews before calling, so Local SEO and Google Business Profile SEO carry the map pack, Reputation Management carries the reviews, and Paid Advertising concentrates the budget in the eight weeks of tax season while the business pages rank all year.
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