Before you start a mobile-friendly e-mail marketing campaign it’s important to look at your audience. Many e-mail campaign software programs let you monitor your traffic and click-through rates to understand how many people are looking at your e-mail on their phones. After you try your first campaign, check the numbers again to see if it’s a viable marketing strategy.If you use your phone to check e-mail like I do, you probably don’t even spend time looking at sites formatted for computer screens. Once you’re done zooming in and out you’ve forgotten what you were looking for. So how do you lay out an e-mail campaign for your mobile customers?

• Think small – pull your phone out and look at the screen. This is your template. Your text, pictures and lead generating forms need to fit in this space comfortably. Most mobile screens can comfortably fit an e-mail or mobile site that’s ¼ the size of that viewed on a desktop.
• Remember the point – You’re trying to generate leads. Don’t use up all your space with copy. Be short and concise. Make your copy jump out at readers so you can get the most influence from only a paragraph of text. Then use the rest of the space for lead generating forms.
• This isn’t broadband – Your e-mail needs to load quickly. Don’t bog it down with large pictures or fancy formatting. How many times have you skipped over a page that wasn’t loading fast enough? If you’ve done it, your customers have done it too. I would suggest sending an e-mail that’s 20k or smaller. This ensures it won’t take forever to download.

If you’ve mobile campaign is successful, build a mobile e-mail list that only gets the small version of the regular e-mail. This will help you cater to a specific group of people and therefore increase your leads.

Here’s a great case study from MarketingSherpa that shows how a targeted mobile e-mail campaign was successful.

Have you gone mobile? Tell us about it in the comment section below.

The unabated surge of social media and mobile device users, combined with the wealth of data coming from those sources, presents a unique challenge to new and experienced CMO’s.  IBM found that CMO’s “have to manage more data” and “understand and engage with more demanding customers” using “tools and technologies their children often understand better than they do.”

“Marketing channels continue to fragment and proliferate with new single point Web 2.0 solutions.  Many companies, especially SMB’s, are ill equipped to take advantage of these tools and effectively employ what are increasingly more sophisticated marketing strategies,” reports Ned Stringham, who founded White Label Marketing in 2010.  New service providers like White Label Marketing help companies deal with the complexity by providing expertise across multiple online channels and leveraging the latest tools and strategies to effectively run cross-channel campaigns for better performance.

“What we do is help companies answer a simple question: How can I consistently engage customers across the many online channels available today and be sure that I am optimizing my marketing spend for the best possible return?” says Trent Wardrop of White Label.  Marketing executives echo this direction, as IBM found nearly two-thirds of CMO’s think return on marketing investment will be the primary measure of their effectiveness by 2015.  As things get more and more complex, we can expect to see more multi-channel solutions in the years to come, both in integrated platforms and in services.

If you would like more information about White Label Marketing, please contact Trent Wardrop at trent@whitelabelmarketing.com or visit the company website at www.whitelabelmarketing.com.

Contact: Trent Wardrop, trent@whitelabelmarketing.com, 801-512-0226

Regardless of which source you choose to believe, the simple fact is that social media is a big traffic, awareness, and lead generator for businesses and ignoring them is foolhardy. So how do you think about your social media presence? We believe there are two broad approaches to thinking about your social media presence –

1. Measure your social media presence by understanding how your brand and business is represented in social media
2. Measure your marketing efforts in social media channels to understand how your campaigns are  utilizing the strengths of social media.

With that in mind, we wanted to identify the social media metrics that matter in both categories. In this post we will tackle the first set of metrics – that help you understand how your brand and business is represented in social media. Her are 5 social media metrics that every business should measure –

1. Conversation volume – This metric helps businesses understand the total number of conversations happening around their brand at any given time period. Ideally the business would measure conversation volume on a weekly basis to understand how the conversations are trending.  This metric should capture conversations across a number of social channels like Facebook wall posts, Tweets, blog posts and forum discussions.
2. Share of voice – This metric helps business assess how well they perform against their peers. So you can compare if you are getting a proportional share of all conversations when compared to your closed competitors. It is useful to help businesses understand how well known they are in social channels.
3. Message reach – This metric helps businesses understand how well their campaigns are propagating across social media. So when a business creates a campaign or conversation in one social channel, this metric helps them understand how other channels pick it up. Closely linked to understanding the viral nature of the message or conversation.
4. Sentiment type – This is a metric that is unique to social media channels. Marketers can understand the sentiment associated with conversations about their business. Sentiment measurement comes in 3 categories – positive, negative, or neutral.
5. Conversation buzz – This metric helps businesses understand the conversations around specific campaigns. This metric tracks the number of new discussions, responses, and reactions associated with blog posts, news feeds, or campaigns. It is a useful way to gauge reaction to a particular topic.

These are some metrics we recommend you track in social media. What else do you look at?

They surveyed a bunch of B2B social media marketers, and here’s what they found:

• B2B marketers, on average, use 8 different content marketing tactics (wow!)
• 60% of them say they are going to spend more on developing and distributing content in the next 12 months
• And that spend, right now, represents over a quarter of their marketing budget

What does this mean to you if you’re selling to businesses right now?Well, it means that your competitors are really buying in to using content and information as a core business-to-business marketing strategy.  So if you’re not using content to reach customers, you might want to rethink your 2012 marketing plan.  People are buying in because content marketing is producing results.  It’s proving to be a valuable way to raise awareness of your brand, generate leads, get new customers and retain them.

If you’re new to content marketing as a business-to-business marketing strategy for getting new clients, you may be asking: “Where do we begin?”   Start with the basics: articles, social media, blogs and newsletters.  I would also add white papers and videos to that list, as those are on the rise from last year.  You should be posting to your website, your blog and your social profiles often.  Some conservative estimates show that websites with blogs get over 60% more traffic.  Take every opportunity to update your customers on what’s going on with your company.  But make those updates useful and relevant.  Best practices say that only 10-20% of your social posts should be about self-promotion, while the majority should be about sharing content (news, information, etc.) that your target audience would care about.

The greatest challenge for content marketing?  41% of respondents agreed it was producing the kind of content that engages your prospects and customers.  Some companies are solving this challenge by outsourcing that function to professional content marketers.  In fact, 62% of B2B marketers that were surveyed outsource this function.  There will continue to be a lively debate, I’m sure, over if content marketing is more effective when brought in house or handled by an outside firm.  And I have yet to see a good study on this.  Here at White Label, we believe content marketing is most effective when both parties are fully engaged.  Companies understand their products and services better than anyone else, so it is vital that they play a central role in developing and crafting new content.  Where companies fall short is knowing how to format and optimize that content for better visibility online, and how to distribute it.  That’s where an outsource provider can lend the most value.

In sum, B2B content marketing is on the rise.  Add this to your marketing plan for 2012, and start thinking now about developing a content calendar for next year.  It will pay off.

Found a content tactic that’s been working great for your company?  We’re interested.  Share your insights below in our comments.

Local Online Advertising for Accountants

What do we mean when we say local online advertising?  At a minimum, we’re talking about getting listed in online local business directories.  If your firm doesn’t have a listing in Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local, you’re missin out.  The Yellow Pages have moved online.  And for the most part, you can get these listings for free.  Google says that 97% of consumers search for local businesses online.  That’s about all of em.  And, if you’re targeting businesses, you should know that buyers of business services are doing the same thing.  Here’s a reputable list from Hubspot of more online local business directories you can sign up for: 50 Local Business Directories.  Some apply to accounting firms, and some do not.  Be selective, but we recommend you submit to 10-15 of them.

Local advertising can also mean showing up in the search engines for keywords that relate to your location, like [accounting firm Chicago].  Your local business listing may put you there, but you could also garner another spot below that, in the organic listings.  For some less competitive locations, you may show up for these terms in the search results page just by making a couple minor text changes to your website page titles.  Top accounting firms are showing up for keywords related to their location, and they are getting walk-ins from local prospective clients because of it.

Search Engine Advertising for Accountants

That leads to our next subject: Search engine advertising for accountants.  Search engine marketing is more than showing up for location-specific keywords; you can also show up for a host of other words that relate to your services.  Ey.com shows up for over 20,000 different keywords, and you can be sure that results in a good chunk of visits to its website every month.  In search engine advertising, you can pay for a listing (pay-per-click advertising) and appear on the top and right-hand side of the results page, and you can get listed in the organic (left side) results by optimizing your content well and building your website’s reputation.  What do we mean when we say “optimizing your content”?  Well, first, we’re talking about creating content, and lots of it.  Leading accounting firms are publishing, in both the traditional and non-traditional sense.  They are writing about things their potential clients care about, whether that’s Sarbanes-Oxley or how to save on taxes.  Their writing takes the form of white papers, articles, blog posts and even wall posts on their Facebook page.  For better search engine visibility, start publishing online.  And start thinking about what topics your prospective clients care most about, and what keywords they would type into the search box to solve their problem.  See an online marketing professional (like White Label) to find out more about how to format that content on your website so the search engine spider can find it, “eat it,” and spit it out for searchers to see.

Social Advertising for Accountants

Social is here and it’s here to stay.  We’ve said it before in other posts, and we’ll say it again.  The young, the old, the smart, the not-so-smart….they’re all jumpin on board.  And you should too.  So if your firm doesn’t yet have a business page on Facebook and a Twitter account, set one up today.  (You’re probably already on LinkedIn—at least you should be.)

Especially Facebook.  Top accounting firms are building fans on Facebook, and use it as a channel to generate new business and to find new talent for the firm.  I know, it requires effort.  I know, it requires a new way of thinking about how you interact with prospective clients.  But if you don’t make the decision to jump in, you’ll be falling behind.  (Remember, 1 in every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook.)  It’s not just the youngsters anymore.  Seniors are using facebook cause the grandkids told em too.  Business professionals are setting up profiles to be more visible and build their reputation.  You should too.

Another great thing about Facebook is your ability to target specific groups with paid advertising.  You can put up ads for your firm and target people based not only on their location, but their interests.  Online advertising is more, now, than bidding on a keyword or putting up a banner on a website that draws a following of your potential customers.  On Facebook, you can reach into that great pool of prospects and display ads to those you believe are your target clients based on what they have said they care about.  It’s pretty powerful, and still new enough to be affordable.

There’s more, of course, that accountants can do in online advertising and marketing.  We haven’t talked about email marketing, online PR or mobile marketing.  But if you have to start somewhere, start with the above, and build from there.

Anyone disagree?  Or want to add something?  Share your comments below.  We’re open to it.

@ (Twitter): Used to call out usernames in Tweets. When a username is preceded by the @ sign, it becomes a link to a Twitter profile. Example: Hi @whitelabelmktg!

1^st Degree Connection (LinkedIn): Someone in your network that you know on a personal or professional level.

2^nd Degree Connection (LinkedIn): Someone in your network that are connected to your 1^st degree connections.

3^rd Degree Connection (LinkedIn): Someone in your network that is connected to your 2^nd degree connections.

Connection (LinkedIn): LinkedIn members who accepted your invitation to connect.

Direct Message (Twitter): Also called a DM, or message.  Private messages between sender and receiver. Tweets sent over SMS become DMs when they begin with “d username” to specify who the message is for.

FF (Twitter): #FF stands for “Follow Friday.” Twitter users often suggest who others should follow on Fridays by tweeting with the hashtag #FF.

Friend Lists (Facebook): Since the Stream will now be updated in real time and will display stories from all of a user’s Friends and Pages, users can use Friend Lists to filter the Stream and choose to only see stories from certain groups of people.

Geolocation / Geotagging (Twitter/Facebook): The use of location data to tell where you are in real time. Can also be called “Tweet With Your Location.”

Groups (LinkedIn): Place for discussion, moderated by group owners and managers.

Handle (Twitter): A username selected to identify a specific user and the accompanying URL. Example: http://twitter.com/#!/whitelabelmktg.

Hashtag (Twitter): The use of the # symbol to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users.

Introduction (LinkedIn): A message that allows members to contact of be contacted through a shared or mutual connection.

Invitation (LinkedIn): Something sent to a member or non member of LinkedIn to join a network.

InMail (LinkedIn): A private message sent between LinkedIn members. Direct, private contact to another user.

InMail Feedback (LinkedIn): Reputation system based on recipient’s responses to sender’s InMail messages.

Like (Facebook): Acknowledgment of a story (update, post, photo, video, etc.) without making a comment.

Mention (Twitter): Mentioning another user in your Tweet by including the @ sign followed directly by their username. Also refers to Tweets in which your username was included.

Network (LinkedIn): Users you have access to and who have access to you up to 3 degrees away.

News Feed (Facebook): The first thing a user sees upon logging in to Facebook. It’s an automatically-generated list of all the activity of the user’s Facebook friends.

Promoted Tweets (Twitter): Tweets that selected businesses have paid to promote at the top of search results on Twitter.

Recommendation (LinkedIn): A comment written to recommend a colleague, business partner, or provider of a professional service including those that are not LinkedIn members.

Retweet-noun (Twitter): A Tweet by another user, forwarded to you by someone you follow. Often used to spread news or share valuable findings on Twitter.

Retweet-verb (Twitter): To retweet, retweeting, retweeted. The act of forwarding another user’s Tweet to all of your followers.

Status messages (Facebook): Text box prompted by “what’s on your mind”. A place to share updates, information or news.

Stream (Facebook): real -time version of the News Feed. Is automatically refreshed to show the latest stories. The Stream will include not just a user’s Friends’ activities, but also the user’s Fan Pages.

Story (Facebook): Stories are the items that appear in the Stream or News Feed. Each individual item in the list is called a Story.

Trending Topic (Twitter): A subject algorithmically determined to be one of the most popular on Twitter at the moment.

Vanity URL (Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn):  Personalized URL. This will help your search rankings.

Social media networks and tools change all the time, giving birth to new words and strategies.  Help us and our readers out by adding to our list of social media terms in the comments below!

Facebook is great for B2B companies because it works at generating leads by word of mouth advertising.  And that is still a vital part of B2B sales.  Think of how many purchase decisions your company has made because a product or service was recommended to you by a trusted source—an employee, a colleague, a friend.  People are just more likely to buy from you when a friend adds the stamp of approval, and what is a Facebook “LIKE” but a tacit stamp of approval from a friend, delivered right to the news feed of your prospective customer.

Call Them to Action

On Facebook, it all starts with a “Like.”  You want people to “like” your company or business page on Facebook.  That gets your name out into a community of buyers (i.e. the friends of your fan).  If someone “likes” you, it will appear on their Facebook wall and everyone in their network will see it in their own news feeds, putting your company name in front of more people.  But how do you get a “like”?  A lot of the time, it’s as simple as asking for it.  In online marketing terms, we like to label this a “call to action”; essentially, that’s just the online equivalent of asking or requesting something from someone.  Studies show that people are 216% more likely to “like” a page when they are called to action.  We are conditioned to follow direction—that is our default mode—so more often than not people will “like” simply because you ask them to.

You can include calls-to-action on almost any marketing material you put out there.  That includes brochures, whitepapers, case studies—even bumper stickers.  In the online world, add Facebook “like” calls-to-action to your website, articles, blog posts, pay-per-click ads, banners.  Take every opportunity.  Here’s an example of what that call-to-action should look like.

Example:

Poor Call-to-Action:  We added a new post to our blog.  Check it out!

Better Call-to-Action: We added a new post to our blog.  “Like” us to check it out!

Get Them Talkin

To gain a fan’s business, though, you have to do more than get them to “like” you; you need to get them to interact with you.  That can often be done by applying some simple best practices for posting to your wall on Facebook.  It is a well known fact in psychology that people enjoy sharing their opinions, so when you post, give them the opportunity to do so. How do you do that?  Simple, just ask.

Example:

Poor Wall Post:  Salesforce is one of the most customizable CRM’s out there.

Better Wall Post: What do you think – is Salesforce the most customizable CRM out there?

Pretty obvious which one would draw more comments.  Remember, the whole reason social media exists is for interaction.

Give Em a Reason to Like You

When people see your name for the first time on a friend’s wall or in ads, they’ll go to your Facebook landing page to learn more about you.  So it’s worth it to get a custom-designed Facebook landing page or banner.  And on that landing page, give them a reason to “like” you or share their information.  You could offer a free whitepaper or a free newsletter signup.  Maybe talk about a free trial or discount.  And, of course, include a call-to-action asking them to sign up or “like” you.

B2B online marketing has its nuances, but as with other forms of marketing, you really can’t do too much.  The more visibility your company gets on Facebook and other social networks, the more likely you are to generate more leads.  All the latest stats are pointing that way.  Don’t be afraid to try new things – Facebook included!

Any other Facebook tips for online B2B marketers?  Please add your comments below.

So, buyer types a keyword into the search engine, like “inventory management software,” and if you offer this product and have done a good job at marketing your website, you should appear in the top results page for this phrase.  How many visits you’ll get and how many potential leads that will result in depends on how many people are searching that word every month, and how many other websites are trying to rank for it.  You could say the first and most important step to effective B2B website marketing is choosing the right keywords to focus on.

How do you find the right keywords?  It’s not as tough as you think.  In fact, a lot of the keyword research process is plain old common sense.  Here is a clear, step-by-step method for selecting keywords that will deliver in more website visits, leads and sales for your company:

Step 1: Brainstorm

Yep, it’s that easy.  Step 1 starts with a little brainstorming session.  You might not realize it, but you already have locked away in your mind a lot of the right keywords.  So whip out the pad and pen, the laptop, the ipad or the smartphone and start your list.  Write down as many words and phrases you can think of that relate to what your company offers.  To begin, you’ll probably be listing “explicit” words, like the one I mentioned above (“inventory management software”).  But don’t forget about keywords people use to describe conditions or problems your product solves (like “how to avoid overstocking”).  Or, keywords that describe the symptoms of a problem (like “misplaced supplies”).  And, last, add your company and brand name to the list or even the names of your top product lines.

Step 2: Check Out the Competition

This is another easy one.  Most of your already know who your competition is.  If you don’t, no worries.  Just search some of the words you listed above in Google.  Pick a few of the most common two-and-three-keyword phrases.  Then pop on the website of your competitors and find out what keywords they are using.  If your competition is putting money into online marketing, you can bet the most important keywords for them will be in the page title of their home page or in the title of other important pages on their site.  To find out what’s in their page title, just hover your cursor over the tab at the top of your browser when you’re on the page.  Or you can right click anywhere on the page and select “View Page Source.”  Once there, don’t get overwhelmed by all the html code.  Hit Cntrl+F and search for the word “title.”  The first result in your search should show you the title tag, where you’ll find the words they are using.  (Also search “keywords” because this could lead to more keywords in their meta keywords tag.)  Next, look at what keywords your competitors are using in prominent headings on their web pages, and in the body text.  Add as many relevant ones as you can find.  No doubt you’ll find a few you didn’t think of.

Step 3: Pick a Keyword Research Tool, Any Tool

On to Step 3.   Still easy.  Here you’re going to pick out a popular keyword research tool and use it to generate more keywords.  There are many popular tools out there, like Wordtracker, SEMRush, KeywordDiscovery, iSpionage; some are free, many are paid.  But one of the most simple and authoritative tools available is offered free by Google itself.  If you have an Adwords account, just log in to your account to access the tool.  Or, you can find the free external version here.  With the Adwords Keyword Tool, you can search some of the keywords you’ve already listed and find more keywords (listed below your search as “Keyword Ideas”).  You can also judge about how often a keyword is searched each month and if the competition is High, Medium or Low.  You can export whole lists of words into excel, a CSV or XML file and manipulate the data that way.  If you’re a beginner, just use this tool to identify new keywords you didn’t think of that you can add manually to your list, and to gather search volumes.  Search volumes tell you how often a keyword is searched a month.  The main metric you’ll want to use for this is Google’s “Global Monthly Searches.”  Granted, the numbers aren’t always accurate, but you can use this number to compare keywords to each other and to get a general sense for how much “demand” there is, and how valuable a keyword may be to target.

Step 4: Combine & Make Your Decisions

The last step is to combine your data into one list, preferably in an Excel worksheet.  List the keywords in the first column and the monthly searches in another.

Sidenote: If you want to get more advanced, I would recommend gathering some kind of metric for competition.  There are a lot of metrics out there, like the Keyword Effectiveness Indicator (KEI) or Wordtracker’s In Anchor & Title (IAAT).  You can read more about those from keyword tool providers.  Many tools will give you the number of results that come up in the search engine when you search that keyword.  (That’s the number of other websites using that term or that Google has identified as related to that term.)  That’s a good metric.  Or you can just go to Google and gather this number yourself.  We’ve found one of the best measures for competition is the number of results that show up with that exact keyword in the title of the page.  To get that, go to Google and type: allintitle:”[keyword phrase]”.  (Insert your keyword in the place of [keyword phrase].)  That will return the number of the web pages Google has found that contain your exact keyword in the title of their page.

Once you’ve got your words, search volumes and competition metric, then you need to make some decisions.  Start with the best 10-15 keywords.  What you’re looking for is keywords that contain a decent search volume (demand), but don’t have too many results (competition).  Try to find a happy medium there.  I know that’s vague, but you’ll get a sense for it as you sift through your list.

Then, go forth and use your keywords.  Use them on your site and in the new content you create.  Use them in your articles, your white papers, your webinars.  Use them in your conversations on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  Use them again and again.  If you’ve used them effectively, people who use them in turn will come to you for an answer to their problem.

Stay tuned for more B2B website marketing tips from White Label Marketing.  And if we missed something here – some tool, some method, or some strategy you’ve found useful for keyword research, please add to our list in the comments below.

But there’s another reason why SMB marketers must pay attention to interactive media – particularly display advertising. Because unlike TV, display advertising is not the exclusive domain of the marketer with a large advertising budget. This makes display a great channel for small and mid-sized businesses to build brand awareness, drive web site traffic, grow the lead pipeline and do all of this within a manageable budget.

So here’s 5 things you need to know about display advertising today –

1. Forrester suggests that display advertising is set to grow about 20% each year for the next 5. This means this channel will become increasingly influential in helping consumers make buying decisions. We can’t ignore it if we have to thrive in the next digital decade.
2. Display advertising is paid for in different ways – there’s the straight cpm (cost per thousand) approach that lets media companies charge advertisers a set rate for 1000 views. But increasingly advertisers can also pay for performance oriented media like cost per click, or even cost per conversion. These new pricing approaches make display more accountable.
3. A number of new entities can deliver value in display advertising. A few you must know – behavioral targeting networks as the name suggests allows advertisers to target consumers based on behavior; ad networks package inventory from multiple different publishers into consistent buying units; ad exchanges that facilitate buying and selling of display across networks; and demand side platforms (DSPs) – tools that help marketers manage the bidding process across ad exchanges.
4. Data driven decision making is here to stay. The infusion of lots of data and technology into the display advertising buying process means marketers can make decisions driven by data and performance rather than gut. The new entities like ad exchanges, and DSPs allow advertisers to fine tune spend based on performance in realtime.
5. Inventory will continue to rise. This is a real challenge for the industry – the rise in mobile and social essentially means that the total number of eye balls is spread across more content. This is the classic case of too much supply (i.e. content in web, social, and mobile) which will generally lower prices across the medium. Simple economics right? Supply outstrips demand. But there is another consequence of this oversupply. The best performing media – sites that drive the greatest traffic , both in quantity and quality, are able to demand extreme premiums. And marketers pay the premiums because these sites almost guarantee traffic in a time when traffic is distributed across so much inventory.

So to net this out – if you are a small or mid-sized company that is looking to build its brand and drive demand using online channels, you can’t afford to ignore display advertising. It gives you a great opportunity to compete with companies many times larger than you by using data, analytics, and strategy to go after the traffic that drives the behavior you seek.

What do you think? Are you looking at display advertising as a viable channel to invest marketing dollars in?

White Label just completed a study on what leading accounting firms are doing in internet marketing.  We found that organic search engine traffic is bringing a lot of potential clients to top accounting firms.  Here’s a good example of that.  Pop on Google and search “control assurance.”  You’ll find that Deloitte appears in the #1 spot under the natural search engine listings.  Why?  Because they have an article on their site that focuses on “control assurance.”  According to Google, this term is searched over 70,000 times a month.  PwC.com is estimated to show up for over 20,000 different keyword phrases, resulting in thousands of new visits to their website every month.

Your Clients Use the Search Engines

In a knowledge-driven industry like Accounting, search engines can be a great source for potential clients.  After all, some estimates say that over 80% of searches on the search engines could be labeled as “informational.”  That means there are a lot of potential clients out there using the search engines to find information and help.  And that search box is usually the first step in the process they use to identify a service provider.  If you provide accounting services to businesses, you may be surprised to know that 93% of B2B buyers use a search engine when starting the buying process (Marketo).

Start with Local Keywords

For accountants that are new to SEO, it all starts with selecting what keywords or phrases you want to focus on.  We recommend you start with local terms.  By that, we mean location-based keywords.  If you offer accounting services in Chicago, target “Chicago Accountant” or “Accountant in Chicago.”  The idea is that you want to be one of the first results on that search page when someone is looking explicitly for an accountant in Chicago or in another city, town or neighborhood near you.  These searches are also very likely to lead to a new visit to your office or a phone call from a prospective client.

Service-related Keywords

Next, we found that many of the leading firms are getting traffic for service-related terms, like “auditing and assurance services” or “hedge accounting.”  The list here is endless, or at least really big.  There are a lot of opportunities for you to get more traffic to your website through service-related keywords.  Focus on your core service offerings and think about what your potential customers may be looking for.  What specialties does your firm excel at?  What industries?  Those types of questions should guide you to selecting relevant keywords that potential clients may be using to eventually seek accounting help.  One mistake companies make here is that they forget how people talk.  No, really.  People often search like they talk.  A used car dealership shouldn’t be trying to rank well in the search engines for “pre-owned cars”; it should be trying to rank for “used cars” because that is what people are searching.  According to Google, “used cars” gets searched 100 times more.  So don’t forget to think about the layman when considering what keywords you want to rank for.

Great SEO Starts with Great Content

Great rankings in the search engines start with great content.  This could be one of the singular most important points for you to remember about SEO for accountants.  And the good news is, you’re in an industry where there is no shortage of things to write about.  The more quality content you put on your website (whether that’s a blog post, whitepaper, case study, or headline), the more likely you are to get search engine visitors.  We think it is vital for accountants to make it a habit to publish.  Top accounting firms are using great content to draw in potential clients, educate them on their services and eventually convert them to a paying customer.  Whether you’re a one-man shop or a multi-national firm, you can do the same.

To learn more about what other online marketing strategies could bring you clients, check out our latest free webinar: Big 4 Strategies in Online Marketing for Accounting Firms.