Internet Marketing for CPAs: Website Optimization is not Optional

Gone are the days when passing out brochures or promotional items, sending holiday greeting cards through the post office, or throwing a customer appreciation party will bring new customers into your office. Even a website is not enough. Today, potential clients are searching the internet for quality content and connecting with social media friends to find the best CPA in their town. So, to attract qualified customers, CPAs must embrace inbound marketing, a content-driven internet marketing strategy, or risk being trumped by the competition.

Effective inbound marketing starts with a website that is optimized for search engines (SEO).This article provides basic SEO tips that will benefit any CPA firm.

CPA Marketers

As a CPA, part of your job is marketing, and your ultimate marketing goals are

·         to delight your current customers with ongoing, quality accounting advice, which will cause them to endorse your services to friends;

·         to become an invaluable resource for taxpayers in your town;

·         to establish your reputation as an expert; and

·         to attract new customers.

To help accomplish this, CPAs must begin by examining the performance of their website. If your website is not listed in the top pages of search queries related to your niche industry, many potential clients will not recognize you as a voice of authority or they might not even know that you exist.

Keywords

Keywords are words and phrases that people will type into a search engine to find tax services in your area. The most effective keywords are long-tailed ones that are two to four words long. Create a hierarchical list of long-tailed keywords that best represent your services. Be sure to include your town name, state, or county in some of them. Here is a sample list to help you get started:

1.       Nags Head CPA

2.       Nags Head accounting services

3.       Nags Head tax preparation

4.       North Carolina tax tips

5.       Dare County accountants

6.       Income tax preparation

7.       Small business accounting

8.       Nags Head tax consulting

9.       NC income tax tips

10.   federal income tax preparation

Over time, you will likely adjust your list after you study which keywords produce the most web traffic. Install a tracking analytics service such as the one provided by Google. Google has a basic analytics service that is free, plus an option for more in-depth features for a fee.

Use your long-tailed keywords in the following ways:

·         Page URLs: For example, instead of publishing a services page URL such as “cpa company.com/services,”use specific titles like “cpa company.com/nc-tax-consulting,” “cpa company.com/dare-county-tax-preparation,” or “cpa company.com/nags-head-accounting-services.”

·         Page Titles: When it makes sense, title your pages with brief, specific words. For example, use “Small Business Accounting” instead of “Accounting.”However, never use obscure, vague, or “clever” titles for the sake of creativity—be direct.

·         Page Text: Place your keywords in the first or second sentence of each page. Then use the same phrase a couple more times within the page. Be sure that you do not stuff a page with key terms as your content might be deemed “spammy” by search engines.

·         Image Titles: Title image file names with keywords. For example, instead of using the default image title automatically produced by your camera, such as “IMG12345.jpg”, name it “nags-head-tax-services.jpg,” if this title is relevant to the subject of the image. Also, never leave spaces in your image titles, always separate words with hyphens.

·         Image Tags: If you have a content management website such as WordPress™, make sure that you populate the “alt” tag option with keywords.Alternate tags not only help improve your SEO, these tags describe images to blind users.

·         Meta Data: WordPress makes it easy to insert keywords into your pages’ “meta titles” and “meta descriptions”. The meta description is the descriptive paragraph that appears under individual page meta titles in a search query results listing.

Web Content Tips:

·         Publish separate pages for each of your CPA services and populate each lightly with long-tailed keyword phrases.

·         Keep in mind that most people will not use CPA-specific jargon to search for your services, so unless you are targeting industry professionals, remove it on all your pages.

Still feeling lost in technology land? Not sure how to get started with internet marketing for CPAs? Let the experts at Paveya optimize your website to help attract more visitors and convert them into leads.

We look forward to helping our customers CREATE leads, CONNECT with customers, and GROW their business.

For more Contact:

Paveya

8452 Caratoke Hwy, Suite 702

Powells Point, NC 27966

855-372-8392

http://www.paveya.com/

info@paveya.com

   

5Tips for Successful Inbound Marketing Strategies

In the current advertising climate, online marketing is at the forefront of any marketing strategy.  For business owners, the process of laying out their online marketing plans gets confusing and sometimes ends up in a big mess of too much information.Inbound marketing is the essence of any and all online marketing plan.Defined, inbound marketing is essentially about attracting prospective customers to your website and, ultimately, your business.To better accomplish this goal, following are five tips for successful inbound marketing strategies:

1.       Understand the Inbound Marketing Cycle.Business owners and Internet marketers must understand the inbound marketing cycle.Internet users realize that they have a need or an issue at which point they begin a search to find a solution.From there, they look at their prospects then make decisions as to which websites they choose to visit. 

2.       Content is Key.Inbound marketing is all about creating content that is directed to potential buyers and viewers.Not only should content be interesting and entertaining, it has to be engaging.Whether through blogs, landing pages, whitepapers, social media posts or other online marketing tactics, content is key.It has to be purpose-driven and grab the users within the first 10-15 seconds of landing at your site.One important piece of advice from Seth Godin, best-selling author and founder of Squidoo, is that “it is more important to do something worth tweeting about rather than getting your next tweet out.”  The same applies to any form of content marketing. 

3.       Be Customer Focused. At HubSpot’s Inbound Conference 2013 in August, inbound marketing experts stressed the importance of being customer focused.With that in mind, they suggest that it is important to be authentic and, in addition to knowing your customers, let them know you.Content gives you the ability to help them solve their problems and provide the information they seek.If you truly know your customers, you know what they want and why they want it.That is half the battle!

4.       Pass the Blink Test.In the inbound marketing world, this test basically suggests that within the first 3-5 seconds of seeing a website, users decide whether they will stay or go.If you are old enough, you remember The Clash’s 1981 hit “Should I Stay or Should I Go Now.”When you think about the “blink test,” that song starts to play in the back of your mind.To pass the blink test, your site must engage viewers of your site by grabbing their attention and getting them to stay there and seek out more information from your site—all within a few seconds.In an article earlier this year, HubSpot suggests that frequently visited sites load quickly, be easy to read and entertaining all while being easy to navigate so that you lead them where they want to go (and you want them to go). 

5.       All Inbound Marketing Plans have the Same Goal.Whether you are going the route of SEO (organic searches) or PPC (paid ads on search results), the goal is the same—direct users to your site.Inbound marketing is defined by where the information flows—how you get the information to flow there is up to you.Ideally, using both is the best way to increase the probability of your site being visited.But if you choose to use only SEO, it goes back to content.

Inbound Marketing is Almost a Science

In the past when all marketers and business owners had to do was place ads in the newspapers and commercials on radio and television, it was basically the equivalent of throwing a ton of sand on sticky paper and hoping that most of the sand stuck to the paper.Today, with the accountability of the Internet, inbound marketing is almost a science.It takes a lot of careful thought and preparation along with execution and follow-through to deliver a successful plan which means more viewers and ultimately buyers.

Need help getting started with inbound marketing? Contact the experts at Paveya.We look forward to helping our customers CREATE leads, CONNECT with customers, and GROW their business.

For more Contact:

Paveya

8452 Caratoke Hwy, Suite 702

Powells Point, NC 27966

855-372-8392

http://www.paveya.com/

info@paveya.com

   

Get Mobile-Friendly or Get Demoted by Google

In 2011, Google announced the release of their Google bot-Mobile web crawler that was designed to search for mobile-specific content. A few months after this announcement, web developers began saying that Google would likely lower page rankings for websites without mobile-friendly content. They guessed right.

In the June 11, 2013 post on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog,Yoshikiyo Kato and Pierre Far wrote, “Smartphone users are a significant and fast growing segment of Internet users, and at Google we want them to experience the full richness of the web.”They go on to say,“To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.”

Non Mobile-Friendly Websites

When a smartphone user visits a non-mobile website, they might have difficulty understanding what products or services that you offer. In addition, navigation is often confusing and frustrating. If your website is not mobile friendly, you can expect most of these visitors to exit your site and never return. And it is estimated that over 50% of web surfers will be using smartphones for searches by the beginning2014, so it is time for business owners to pay attention to the other half of their audiences.

Google's June 2013 announcement listed two of the most common errors seen in websites that have unsuccessfully attempted to create accessibility for smartphone users: faulty redirects and smartphone error pages.

Faulty Redirects

Websites that try to accommodate mobile phones often use different URLs for desktop and smartphone users. “A faulty redirect is when a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on the smartphone-optimized website”, writes Kato and Far.For example, a site that will soon lose search engine ranking is one where all the“pages on the desktop site redirect smartphone users to the homepage of the smartphone-optimized site”.

This faulty redirect might confuse a smartphone user and they will likely leave your site. The solution is plain: Redirect smartphone users from a desktop page to its equivalent smartphone-optimized page. If you don’t have the content in a smartphone-friendly format, link to the desktop content rather than redirecting users to an irrelevant page.

Smartphone Error Pages

Some desktop URLs display an error page to smartphone users. There are many causes of these error pages and here are some common ones.

·         Sending mobile phone users to an error page:Instead, redirect smartphone users to smartphone-optimized pages instead of a “Not Found” page (404 error page).

·         Directing mobile phone users to an irrelevant page instead of the content a user is looking for:If a page on your site content is not available in a smartphone-friendly format, direct the mobile phone user to the desktop page instead.

·         Embedding unplayable videos: Many websites contain videos that work well on desktops but don’t work on smartphone devices. For example, if the video requires Adobe Flash, it won't be visible on an iPhone or Android versions 4.1 and higher.

These are just a few examples of why Google will soon be penalizing search engine rankings for sites that aren’t compatible with smartphones.An equally motivating factor for business owners to optimize their sites for smartphones is the user experience. If your user becomes frustrated, you will potentially lose a lead or sale every time a smartphone user visits your site. Smartphone internet surfers rely on convenience, speed, and accuracy. Your mobile site should be a complete version of your desktop site that loads quickly and displays properly in every mobile device. 

Small Business SEO Company 

Are you wondering how to get started? Paveya can help get your site ready for every variety of smartphone out there with development and extensive testing.

For more Contact:

Paveya

8452 Caratoke Hwy, Suite 702

Powells Point, NC 27966

855-372-8392

http://www.paveya.com/

info@paveya.com