How accounting companies can improve their websites and increase their revenue

Introduction

The aim of this guide is to provide useful information for accounting companies to help them improve their websites and rank higher on Google. It should be noted that producing content for the sole purpose of manipulating search engine rankings is against Google’s terms of service. The information provided in this guide is to help you create better, more helpful websites which will lead to you ranking higher on Google Search.

Although this guide may contain information you’re already aware of or have on your website, I recommend you read each point carefully. There is a big difference (to potential clients and Google) between having an element on your website and implementing it correctly. All too often, I see companies (big and small) who have included something they have heard is important (which is great) but the implementation lacks key parts which are important to Google. I will explain these distinctions and why they exist so that you can implement them correctly and have better, more helpful content for both users and search engines.

Without overwhelming you with technical jargon, we need to try and put ourselves in the shoes of Google and see what each element in your website actually looks like to the computer programs that analyse your pages. If you want to learn more, read my article about how Google works, but for this guide, the minimum you need to know and understand is that Google and other search engines do not see your pages in the same way a human does.

When a crawler (the small program Google will send to analyse each of your pages) lands on your page, it sees code. Although through advances in technology, especially in recent years (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.15848.pdf) computer programs are able to interpret images, you need to consider the cost of implementing these especially across the 2 billion websites with multiple pages across the internet. Therefore, the way that crawlers will interpret your images will be through the context of them on your page is through their metadata (information you use to explain what the image is, used for people using assistive technologies), file name, and potentially any text that provides context around the images.

The key takeaway here is that Google sees your page very differently to how you and other humans see it. In order to optimise how you present information, you need to make it easy for Google to know what each element is about and lower the cost of information retrieval. This may seem like a trivial aspect, but understanding it is connected to why so many of these specific implementation points are so important. If you make Google work harder to understand the content of your webpages, they simply will not be able to extract the important information and will choose to promote your competitors who make this information easy to find.

Usability (UX)

Ensuring that your website is easy to use can be a simple way of improving your website for both Google and your potential customers. Usability falls under the category of user experience which you might have seen before referenced as UX. It is the overall feel of the interaction a person has with a website. It aims to create easy, efficient, and enjoyable experiences by focusing on usability, accessibility, quick performance, visual design, clearly presented content, intuitive interaction design, and consistent presentation across the product. Good UX ensures that users can navigate and use a product effortlessly, making their interaction satisfying and meeting their needs seamlessly. In short, if a visitor to your website gets frustrated for any reason, this is probably an indicator of poor user experience.

Google places an emphasis on the experience users have with your page and have a dedicated article I would recommend reading to provide more context (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience) in this they explain that “Our core ranking systems look at a variety of signals that align with overall page experience.” From this, we can deduce that having a poor overall page experience will negatively affect your website's rankings and frustrate your users, which might ultimately lead to you losing clients.

One of the biggest areas I see websites failing and frustrating their users is through their usability on mobile. Since around 2016 “Mobile and tablet internet usage exceeds desktop for the first time worldwide” (https://gs.statcounter.com/press/mobile-and-tablet-internet-usage-exceeds-desktop-for-first-time-worldwide).

Improving your website for mobile doesn’t have to be overly complex and common sense can take you very far. Some things you should consider are firstly testing your website on a mobile phone, how easy is it to use in comparison to your competitors (especially those that rank highly, they probably have mobile-optimised sites). Consider whether text is readable without zooming, are buttons sufficiently sized and easy to press or not too closely spaced together. When building websites, good designers and developers will use a “mobile first” approach where they organise a site for mobile and then expand it for larger devices. To test how your pages perform on mobile, you can use this free Google tool, simply enter the URL of the page you want to test and then follow the specific recommendations it provides if you need any help understanding what it all means feel free to email me (https://pagespeed.web.dev/).

A good test to see how intuitive your website is to use is how well someone who has never visited your website can navigate and find your main sections and pieces of content. We are used to certain elements being in certain places such as a navigation menu being at the top and categories being presented within there. Some questions to ask yourself might be do the categories make sense, could you refine them so that they are grouped in a different way which is more logical to someone unfamiliar with your website? This also affects the layout of your website, does each page have a clear purpose? Is information easy to find? One of my favourite ways to improve the look and feel of a website as well as simplify it is to utilise white space better. Often we try and fit as much information as we can onto the screen and as a result, this creates a barrage of content that is hard to read if we were to simply break this information up and space it so that our eyes can easily follow each element in isolation traversing the page as we would a newspaper or the document much like we do in a printed document.

Utilising high-quality professional-looking images can be the difference between a website that looks trustworthy and professional and a website that looks amateur and less trustworthy. The reason images can make such a difference is that our eyes are drawn to images on a page and are often the first things we see; therefore, they are a key way in which your website is perceived, especially if your potential clients are exploring different options and briefly evaluating your website. Good images can set your website apart from your competitors and make it seem much more professional. Not everyone will have access to a professional photographer, but smartphones nowadays are more than capable.

How to get a good photo for your website:

• Ensure the main subject of the photos is in clear view and well positioned in the frame.
• Crop the photo to remove unnecessary elements.
• Make sure the photos are taken in good lighting, such as during the day in natural light.
• Steady the camera on a stable surface so that it is not blurry.
• Consider blurring irrelevant details or background.
• Try and capture the highest resolution possible.

I would be an awful SEO and developer without stressing the importance of using correct image sizes for different device sizes (even just having one smaller for mobile). Furthermore compressing images when uploading them to your site is very important as it can have a big impact on the speed of your website. Depending on the platform you use to build your site this may be done automatically but it is something good to know and most importantly to check.

With these simple steps, you can use a smartphone to capture high-quality images. If you don't have a good camera on your smartphone, consider reaching out to friends and family for help. All too often, I see businesses using a low-quality or bad photo as their main image that doesn't reflect the quality of their business/service provided. This may seem obvious to some but it can be one of the easiest things to improve with zero cost and minimal effort.

Trust

Ensuring that both your clients and Google trust your website is vital for your success online. Out of all the signals you can send to Google, it is stated in their extensive documentation that “trust is the most important” (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#eat:~:text=trust is most important) factors that affect trust that I will cover are security, accreditations, links to and from your website, reviews, and having helpful content.

In order to provide context behind why trust is such a key factor and how to improve it, we need to dive into two important and fairly technical topics, but bear with me because they are incredibly important and understanding them will allow you to improve your perceived trust effectively. These are “topical authority” (your authority on a given subject) and “E-E-A-T” (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust). Google updates its algorithm many times per year and the recent updates have stressed the importance of these factors.

Firstly, you need to understand the concept of Topical Authority and the different categories of websites that Google has. Without going into too much detail, Google has a duty to ensure that the results it returns don’t harm their customers. Different websites will have different degrees of this but in general, there is an emphasis on certain types of websites such as those related to health and finance which come under great scrutiny. These websites are referred to in the Google guidelines as “Your Money or Your Life” topics or YMYL for short. If you have time, I’d highly recommend reading these guidelines as you can see how most results that rank highly on Google, you can find the guidelines here: (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content). To directly quote Google on how this concept of Topical Authority fits in with them providing reliable information: “We’ve learned that sites that demonstrate authoritativeness and expertise on a topic are less likely to publish false or misleading information, so if we can build our systems to identify signals of those characteristics, we can continue to provide reliable information.” (https://blog.google/products/search/how-google-delivers-reliable-information-search).

So how do you improve your Topical Authority? Well, having helpful detailed content which comprehensively covers a topic and its related areas is a start. There are other signals which demonstrate your expertise, experience, authority, and trust for a subject. As I mentioned earlier, reviews, security, accreditations, links. The way you implement these is important, let’s have a look at each area.

Reviews

Reviews play a crucial role in establishing trust and authority for your website. An example of this could be having a screenshot of reviews. On the surface, this is a great practice that shows both your potential clients and Google that you have relevant experience and are rated well but if you look deeper you see that a screenshot of a review is just a picture, although your clients may be able to read this the actual text content does not appear to Google. A secondary issue that occurs here is that even if you extract the text from the review there is no authoritative source to it. There are many workarounds to this the most important would be providing a link from a trusted source, this way both Google and your clients can verify these reviews giving them the credibility they deserve.

A review without any links for verification

If we take this generic review component people use on their websites, the content is machine readable but not verifiable therefore it will not contribute much towards the trustworthiness and authority of the website. Although it is nice for clients to see a review there is no way of verifying it so from the perspective of both search engines and your perspective clients

A review with a link to their Google reviews for verification

In this next image, we can see the content is fairly similar however the implementation is much more effective. The review contains a link to view the companies Google reviews, this makes the information retrieval much easier for clients and Google because the review is verifiable for both Google and your website users. There are many different types of review components you can get depending on the website platform you use but I have shown the most simple that is accessible to anyone, it is simply a review and a link to the source.

Accreditations

Your accreditations are what sets you apart from competitors and non-accountants, it is extremely important to show your clients all your accreditations qualifications, awards, certifications, and any regulatory bodies you adhere to. Referring to the search quality writer guidelines from Google, having clearly presented accreditations are a sign of trust and authority. Accreditations show you have experience in an area but you should make it easy for clients and Google to find this information and verify it where possible. Maybe you are a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, there are various ways you can integrate this into your website with varying levels of trust for clients and Google: You could mention it in your website content and you could include an image or link to the official website. These are good on the surface but how does a client or Google know that this is verifiable information. The best thing you can do is link to your business's profile in their index and write something like “check our accreditations status here” (https://www.icaew.com/about-icaew/find-a-chartered-accountant). With this, the information is verifiable and therefore satisfies the E-E-A-T criteria and signals that to Google and your clients. Making this information easy for them to find is the key here.

Previous Experience

Being able to domonstrate E-E-A-T factors carries far more weight than simply referencing something related to them. When speaking about your previous experience, try and find a way of demonstrating in a way that is verifiable such as linking to previous clients, providing testimonials on trusted platforms such as LinkedIn or review sites. Be specific, explain in detail (if possible) and provide links and references. For example, if you worked on a large project and received a recommendation on Linkedin this would be useful to link to and reference on your website, your customers and Google can verify this information and will trust more for being able to see it.

Security

Security is vital, especially in any industry related to finance. Other ways in which you can demonstrate your commitment to security include telling users how you store their data, demonstrating an awareness of laws and regulations such as GDPR. If you accept payments on your website, make sure you highlight the security involved in these platforms. Be specific and explain them. When using images, make sure they are the official ones and link to the website if relevant so users can research them themselves.

First Hand Experience

Google added experience to what used to be just E-A-T last year for a valid reason. Demonstrating firsthand experience of a subject is highly valuable to a user. The implementation of this can completely change how effective it is. As with previous experience be sure to mention anything relevant in detail and if possible link to it to verify the information. Of course this will not always be possible and you can't write about absolutely everthing but try to do so where you can. The extra time it takes to add these links and references will pay off in the long run by gaining the trust of your clients and Google.