Proximity
“accountant near me”, “accountants in [town]”, “chartered accountant [town]”
Comparing three or four local firms, and decided largely in the map pack. The Google Business Profile does more of the work here than the website does.
SEO for accountants
SEO for accountants, for the clients you actually want
neometa provides accountancy SEO for UK practices from £495 a month, with no VAT added on top. The work is a page per client type (contractors, landlords, limited companies, sole traders), a page per task (self assessment, VAT registration, payroll), and local visibility. Accountancy search runs on a statutory calendar, so the pages have to be indexed months before the deadline. Where you need a new website, the build is included in the £495 plan.
Most accountancy websites have one page called Services, and it is asked to rank for limited companies, landlords, contractors, self assessment and payroll all at once. It ranks for the firm's own name. Meanwhile the searches that bring the clients you want are being answered by somebody else.
Worth doing when
- You rank for your firm's name and almost nothing else
- New clients come from referral, and referrals do not scale
- You want limited companies and landlords, not more self assessment
- The website has one Services page doing all the work
If you are already turning work away, this is not where your money should go and we will say so.
- Local plan
- £495/month
- Growth plan
- From £895/month
- Best for
- Practices from sole practitioner up
- Work included
- Site + Business Profile
01 / 04
Four different searches
One Services page cannot win four different clients
Accountancy search splits by who the searcher is and what they need doing, and those are two different axes. A limited company director looking for an accountant is not making the same search as somebody who has left their tax return until January, and neither of them is served by a page listing every service you offer.
The client-type pages are where the money is. A firm with a page called “accountant for limited companies” beats a firm with one page mentioning limited companies among nine other things, because the heading can match the query exactly.
How the demand splitsAccountants
Client type
“accountant for limited company”, “small business accountant”, “accountant for landlords”
The searcher already knows what they are and wants a firm that says so out loud. A page per client type outranks one page listing every client type. This is the group worth building first.
Task
“self assessment accountant”, “VAT return service”, “payroll bureau [town]”
Closest to a purchase and the easiest to under-serve, because most firms bury each of these as a single bullet on the Services page.
Question
“how much does an accountant cost uk”, “do I need an accountant for a limited company”
Nobody is buying at this moment. But the firm that answers is the firm in mind six weeks later when the proximity search happens, and almost nobody bothers.
02 / 04
How it works
What the monthly work actually is
Accountancy is the one sector where the calendar does half the planning for you. The order below follows it.
Find out what you already rank for
Search Console and the live results for your town and your client types. Most practices rank for the firm name and nothing else, and it is worth having that confirmed before spending anything.
Fix the Google Business Profile
Categories, services, description, photos and questions, kept consistent with the site. For the proximity searches it outweighs everything on the website, and it takes an afternoon.
Build a page per client type you want more of
Not all of them, just the two or three worth the most to you. Limited companies, landlords, contractors, whichever it is, with the heading matching the phrase and the fee structure stated.
Then the task pages underneath
Self assessment, VAT, payroll, company accounts. Each one answering the question the searcher typed, each one linking back to the client-type page above it.
Publish the seasonal content early enough to matter
A self assessment page put live in January has no time to rank before the deadline. Build it once, keep it up all year, update it each cycle so the URL accumulates history instead of restarting.
03 / 04
Price
Full pricing£495 a month, against one retained client.
Local is £495 a month: one office, the searches around it, the Business Profile and the site work. Growth is £995 a month where you want more job types, more towns or the harder terms. If you already have a website worth keeping there is no build to fund, so Growth is £895 a month on a six-month minimum term instead of 12. Prices are the full amount payable; no VAT is added on top.
A retained limited-company client is usually worth well over £495 a year, and often several times that across the years they stay. On that arithmetic the plan needs to bring in one or two a year to have covered itself, which is a fairer test than rankings. Ranking movement on accountancy terms is a three-to-six-month conversation, and anyone quoting weeks is either buying links or counting impressions. Full pricing.
04 / 04
The questions people actually ask
What does accountancy SEO involve?
A page for each client type you want more of, a page for each task people search by name, and local visibility for the town the practice sits in. Contractors, landlords, limited companies and sole traders are looking for different things and should not be sharing a Services page.
Task pages are the half most practices skip. “Self assessment deadline”, “VAT registration threshold” and “how much does an accountant cost” are searched constantly, and they are answered by pages a qualified accountant can write in an afternoon.
What is the best website for accountants?
On Local the website is part of the £495 a month: a mobile-responsive WordPress site of around five pages, with hosting, SSL and maintenance included and no build fee. Growth builds up to ten pages for £995 a month, and a standalone website without the SEO plan starts at £2,500. Where we build the site the minimum term is 12 months, and the site is yours at month 12.
One with a page for each type of client you want and each task they search for, live months before the deadline it serves, and a clear indication of fees. The firm that makes its fees and services easy to find wins more of the people comparing practices. We build that site inside the monthly SEO plan.
How much does an SEO agency for accountants cost?
£495 a month for one office and the searches around it, £995 a month for more client types, more towns or the harder terms, and £895 a month on a six-month minimum term if the website is already worth keeping. Those are full amounts payable, with no VAT added.
A single limited company client on a monthly retainer usually covers the plan outright, and unlike most sectors that client tends to stay for years. The recurring nature of accountancy revenue is what makes the sum work.
Why does the statutory calendar matter for SEO?
Because accountancy search has a timetable and most practices miss it. Self assessment searches climb from November and peak in January. Year end and corporation tax searches move on a different cycle again, and payroll questions spike each April.
A page published in January for a January deadline has missed it. Google needs months to index and rank a page, so the work has to be done in the quiet months to pay in the busy ones. This is the single most common reason accountancy SEO underperforms.
Do trust signals matter more for accountants?
Considerably more than in most sectors, because the client is handing over their finances to a stranger they found on a search engine. ICAEW, ACCA or AAT membership, the named people who will actually do the work, and how long the practice has been going all belong on the page rather than in a footer.
None of that lifts a ranking by itself. All of it decides whether the visit becomes an enquiry, which is the half of the problem that position does not solve.
Should an accountancy practice target its own town?
Yes, and then sequence outwards. Local searches still convert best for practices that meet clients in person, and they are far less contested than the national terms.
Practices working entirely remotely are a different case: there the client type is the differentiator rather than the location, and the effort goes into the contractor, landlord or e-commerce pages instead of the town ones.
Background reading
Want the detail before you talk to anyone?
Other professions
SEO for Accountants questions
Questions people usually ask us
Google Business Profile changes and on-page fixes can show inside a few weeks. Ranking movement on client-type and task terms more commonly takes three to six months. The seasonal pages have their own timing problem on top of that: a self assessment page needs to be live by October to be ranking for January, so the work has to be planned around the calendar, not started when the deadline is in sight.
Ranges, with what moves them. Firms worry that publishing fees invites price shopping, and the opposite is closer to true: the searches with real commercial intent include the word cost, and a page that refuses to indicate anything reads as evasive. It also filters out the enquiries you did not want, which is worth something on its own.
They do different jobs and accountancy is a sector where the gap is wide. Paid clicks for accountancy terms are expensive and stop the moment you stop paying. The organic difficulty on the same terms is often low, which means the visibility is comparatively cheap to build and it stays. Ads make sense to cover a January deadline you have left too late; they are an expensive way to run all year.
Put them in text with the registration, not only in a logo image, because Google cannot read a logo. ICAEW, ACCA, AAT, CIMA or ICAS all belong on the page, alongside named people with their qualifications. It affects conversion more than ranking: somebody handing over their financial affairs checks, and the firm that makes it easy to find wins more of those decisions.
Local is £495 a month and covers one office and the searches around it. Growth is £995 a month where you want more client types, more offices or more competitive terms. Where you already have a website worth keeping there is no build to fund, so Growth is £895 a month on a six-month minimum term rather than 12. Prices are the full amount payable; no VAT is added on top.
Not yet. The client work is trades, clinics and professional services more broadly, and there is no accountancy case study to show you. Before you commit to anything we will show you what your own site ranks for today and which firms are holding the client-type searches in your area, which is a more useful thing to look at than somebody else's numbers.
Often more so than for a large firm, because the competition on a town-level search is thinner than on a national one. The question is what a retained client is worth to you over the years they stay. If that number is comfortably into four figures, the arithmetic works at £495 a month. If most of your work is one-off returns at a couple of hundred pounds, it is a much closer call and worth doing the sum first.
On position and clicks for the specific searches being targeted, monthly, in plain English. Targets are reviewed at eight weeks so a term that is not responding gets a change of approach early instead of being left to run for a year.
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Send us your website and the client types you want more of. We'll come back with what you currently rank for, who owns those searches in your area, and whether this is worth doing.
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Simon reviews every enquiry himself and replies within one working day. No finished brief required.