Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

This can be a competive search term to get listed on. Do you already have a website?

Make sure to get a Google Local listing which businesses can do. Google really likes to see quality links to your site. The best way to get these is to be sure that you offer a reason for people to link to your site. Be sure to give people useful information that is kept current.

You can also do Google Adwords, which won't really help you in the organic listings, but can get you on the page. Be sure to to be very specific with your keywords as these keywords will be very competive globally. You really may only want your ads to show in certain locals.

Be sure to optimize your page titles and content to reflect words that people would search for. Both Yahoo and Google like this.

There is a tool I found useful from Hubspot at www.websitegrader.com. This will give you some more ideas on how to optimize your site.

Search rankings do not occur over night and to take a multi-pronged approach.

Hope this helps,
Mike

Mike already mentioned Website Grader, you might also check out a couple of these articles about SEO:

Article - Shortest Tutorial Ever on SEO Search Engine Optimization

Article - 7 Signs to Run Screaming from an SEO Consultant

Article -Top 10 Most Egregious SEO Mistakes

Webinar/Video - SEO 101

Don't forget pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. The suggestions you're getting will help you with your organic search results ... which take time. If you're in a hurry to get traffic, PPC can let you target exactly the keywords you want (and pay for the privilege).

Having some experience in that specific industry, I can tell you right now that there is a lot of competition for the big keywords for tax preparation. So if you don't have a huge marketing budget, I would be careful trying to compete.

Who is your customer? Is it B2B or C2B? Meaning are you doing corporations as well? Any clients (companies or individuals) who can ad you as a vendor or just a link to your site on their will also help. But be careful not to get carried away by asking everyone you know who has a website to add your link, otherwise, that'll look negatively upon your site.

If you are only providing service to a local area, try out the Google radio ads. I hear that for city specific companies, they can give a boost to traffic.

The biggest hurdle in driving traffic to your site via organic search is that many people search for vague terms, which means that the larger more established tax preparation websites are going to appear towards the top. And to reiterate what mike said above, be patient. It can take months to see actual results from SEO and SEM, don't get sucked into any schemes of top page in a week.

A lot of people think that a website is an advertising medium, and getting on the first page of Google is the only way to make their website work for them. In such a competitive field where you need to build trust, you need to rely on offline resources to help build that trust.

People don't usually look for a bookkeeper or accountant by doing a Google search. You'll be dealing with their money, so they typically will be asking other people who they use.

In addition to building the best site you can, optimizing it for the search engines and doing search engine marketing, you need to drive traffic to your website, and get new business, by building up a good referral base. Your website can be an information and credibility source, and your referrals will drive them there. The two go hand-in-hand. Ask your clients for referrals, network like crazy, join some business organizations, and a referral network like LeTip, or BNI and get those people to refer their family, friends, and associates.