Why your accountancy site ranks for your name and nothing else
If your practice ranks for "Smith & Co Bristol" and nothing else, your site is not broken. It simply has no page that answers any question a stranger would ask. One Services page listing twelve things cannot rank for twelve things.
Key takeaways
- Google ranks pages, not firms. One page per service line or you rank for none of them.
- Your name ranking is not evidence that SEO is working; it is the floor, not the ceiling.
- Fee ranges on the page reduce enquiry volume and increase enquiry quality.
- Two deadline-timed articles a year outperform a monthly blog nobody reads.
The five-minute diagnosis
Open Search Console, go to Performance, and sort queries by impressions. If the top ten are all variations of your firm name and your partners' names, you have a coverage problem rather than a ranking problem. Google knows who you are. It has no reason to show you to anyone who does not.
Now count your pages. Most Bristol practices we audit have between five and nine: home, about, services, team, news, contact. Six pages cannot compete with a firm that has twenty-five, no matter how good the six are. Most of the accountancy work SEO Bristol does starts here, with the page list rather than the rankings.
What to build instead
- One page per service: year end accounts, payroll, VAT returns, self assessment, bookkeeping, company formation, Making Tax Digital, R&D claims.
- One page per client type where the advice genuinely differs: contractors, landlords, e-commerce sellers, pubs and restaurants, charities.
- A fees page with real monthly ranges by client type. This is the page that converts.
- Two articles a year timed at the January and April deadlines, live six weeks before the rush starts.
That is roughly twenty pages. Built a few at a time it is a few months of work, and the pages compound: each one is another way for a stranger to find you, permanently.
The fees question
Every practice asks it and most decide against. The firms we work with that publish a range report the same two things: fewer total enquiries, and a much higher proportion worth meeting. If you spend two hours a week on calls with people who were never going to pay your rate, a fees page is the highest-return page on the site.
Questions people ask
Will a competitor undercut us if we publish fees?
They already can; they can ring and ask. What they cannot copy is the reason your range is what it is, which is what the page should explain.
Is a blog worth it for an accountancy firm?
A monthly blog for its own sake, no. Two well-timed deadline guides and a handful of client-type pages, yes.
How long does this take to work?
Service pages usually rank within three to four months in Bristol. The competitive term "accountants Bristol" takes longer and is worth less than the specific ones.
SEO for Bristol accountants, fixed at £299 a month with no annual increase, from a Bristol SEO agency that never outsources.
SEO for accountants