The Ultimate Ecommerce Accountant's Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engines like Google want to give their users the best experience.

If you get great at defining which users you are the best experience for, it will get better at directing them your way and not towards your competitors.

In other words, once you have your niche within the specialist accounting space, you’ll be able to target focused users more likely to want your service.

So how does Google rate your site among your competitors?

One way to think of your website is like a tree.

In order for it to be fruitful, i.e., generate lots of new search leads and potential customers, it needs a few robust elements all working together:

The stronger your elements are, the more attractive a hub your website is - both for search engines, and for ecommerce sellers looking for you.

Today, Google is all about entities when it comes to SEO - not just one or two great blogs about bookkeeping methods or accounting software choices.

It’s looking at the entire tree.

So a holistic approach is more important now than ever.

By optimizing each element of your tree, we’ll be covering off the three types of SEO:

Don’t worry, we’ll tackle these in bitesize chunks, with plenty of examples and instructions for applying them to your own site.

Let’s start with the roots of the tree, it’s performance and visibility - or its “core web vitals”.

Disclaimer: These will be different based on your hosting platform.

What you do for a WordPress site won’t look the same as for Squarespace.

But there are some tools that you can set up to help you diagnose what might be compromising your core web vitals, regardless of platform. And these also help you measure the impacts of the other steps we go through in this guide.

These instructions are the most technical in our guide, but they are invaluable in providing you with actionable insights and performance data for ongoing SEO efforts.

We’re going to set up and link Google search console and Google analytics accounts for your site.

1. Head to the Google Search Console, create a login, and add your site.
   Source: Backlinko.
2. You’ll need to copy your website’s URL into the Domain section.
3. Now, you’ll need to verify your site. You can do this in a few different ways, so we’ll pick one here. Select HTML tag, and add that code to your website’s homepage code.
   How do I add to my homepage code?
   
   

   Make sure you are on your homepage. Once you find your code via the steps below, add the HTML tag to your page’s section of code.

   For PC users:

   • Chrome: CTRL + U, or open your menu (the three straight lines) and navigate to Tools > View Source.
   • Internet Explorer: CTRL + U, or right click and select View Source.
   • Firefox: CTRL + U, or navigate to Firefox > Web Developer > Page Source.
   • Opera: CTRL + U, or right click and select View Source.

   For Mac users:

   • Safari: Option+Command+U, or right click and Show Page Source.
   • Chrome: Option+Command+U, or navigate to View > Developer > View Source, or right click to View Page Source.
   • Firefox: Command+U, or right click and select Page Source, or head to Tools > Web Developer > Page Source.

4. Next you want to tell Google which country’s traffic you are targeting, in order to get the most specific and relevant performance data.

   To do that, head to Search Traffic > International Targeting. Open the Country tab, and check the Target Users In box. Choose your country from the drop-down menu.

5. Now you want Google to tell you which keywords your site is ranking for, as well as where your traffic is coming from. This involves linking your search console profile to Google Analytics.
6. Once into Google Analytics, head to Admin > Property Settings > Adjust Search Console. Click Add, find your website, check the box, and select Save.
7. Now that your search console and analytics profiles are linked, you should start to see the following metrics:
   

   Impressions	Clicks	Click-through rate (CTR)	Position by country	Keywords
   The number of views a piece of content or ad generated.	The number of clicks a piece of content or ad generated.	The rate at which your impressions turned into clicks.	Where are you ranking highest in global search results?	The keywords and phrases bringing people to your site.

8. We’ll talk more about these metrics later. Right now, we want to check on your current core web vitals state. Back in the search console, select Core Web Vitals.
   Source: Backlinko.
   

9. You’ll see charts showing your site’s current performance. “Poor URLs” should be your greatest concern.

   The console will tell you the issue that needs fixing. For example, below, it is a “CLS issue”, which impacts the visual stability of those pages:

   Source: Backlinko.

You’ll need to work your way through the improvements that Google suggests in its console. It may be a time-consuming process, but this is the best way to improve your core web vitals.

In the introduction of this section we introduced the three key metrics for strong core web vitals.

Here, we’ll talk about what they mean in a practical sense, and how you can ensure that your website is a great place for prospective customers to spend time.

The three core web vitals:

Optimizing these things ensures a great user experience, and one that Google is more likely to rank highly in the search results.

And remember, these won’t necessarily bomb your search results rankings, either. So if you’re completely overwhelmed - or put off - by the instructions coming, that’s ok. You can either seek expert help or work on improving the other, less technical areas of your site.

But for those adventurous sorts, let’s crack on.

The main tool you’ll want, aside from Google Search Console, is Google PageSpeed Insights.

This will show you your core web vitals performance in one place: Source: Backlinko.

Optimizing your LCP (or page speed)

The LCP refers to the time it takes for all the content on your page to load for a visitor.

In 2001, a study found that visitors would wait up to 8 seconds for pages to load. By 2008, that had reduced to 5.1 seconds and today, it’s nearer 2.

Source: Neil Patel.

You can lose prospects a few times over from slow loading speeds - not only will that first visitor bounce back to Google, but Google takes note of your “bounce rate” and sends less people to you in the first place.

So let’s fix it.

• The Google Search Console is better for LCP improvements. It shows you the performance of all your website’s pages in one place, and categorizes them as “Good”, “Needs Improvement”, and “Poor”.
• You want all of your pages to reach the state of LCP in 2.5 seconds. This can be hard for pages that contain lots of media.
• Upgrading your website’s host may result in faster loading times.
• Using lazy loading, which is when images only load as the user scrolls down to them, helps reduce the heavy lifting of loading media-rich pages.
• Removing or reducing larger elements. The search console will identify this problematic content.
• Cleaning up your code. If you want to get technical, minifying your CSS can help improve LCP. This is simply cleaning your code of white spaces, unnecessary indentation and other redundant elements. There are tools to do this for you.

Optimizing your FID (or page interactivity)

After page loading speed comes the time it takes for a visitor to interact with your page.

This interaction might be clicking a link to another page, filling in a form, or opening a navigation menu item.

For pages of blog content, the First Input Delay isn’t so relevant, since you want users to read rather than interact with it in most cases.

But if the page contains a form you want users to fill out, the time that it takes your site to allow them to do this hugely impacts user experience.

Here are some tips to improve FID:

• Looking into minimizing or deferring the JavaScript on the page. This process may depend on the website platform you use, so instructions to do this will vary.
• Remove any unnecessary third-party scripts, if applicable.
• Opt for a browser cache. This is like a record of page interaction so that a lot of the loading doesn’t need to be replicated again later on.

Optimizing your CLS (or page stability)

The Cumulative Layout Shift, or CLS of your page, refers to how stable it is as it loads content.

Have you ever spotted something on a webpage, attempted to click it but it moved away just as you got there? Maybe you were sent somewhere else as a result?

Yeah, that’s annoying. And that’s CLS.

If elements on your page shift around a lot as it loads, causing users to have to spend longer finding what they want, then CLS is high. And high CLS is bad.

Google measures these in the same way as LCP and FID, with “Good” (up to 0.1), “Needs Improvement” (0.1 - 0.25) and “Poor” (0.25+).

Things you can try when it comes to improving your CLS score:

• Assign dimension attributes to media on your page (like videos). This helps a browser understand what is on your page, how big it is, and make space accordingly as it loads.
• Give any advertisements a dedicated space. This avoids them pushing other content out the way.
• Add any new user interface elements, like buttons or interactive content, further down the page so that it doesn’t mess with what a user expects to land on first.

Hopefully you can see that optimizing your core web vitals is just about great, frictionless user experience.

And that’s all Google wants to provide to its searchers.

And if you’re still confused by all this, or you’re intrigued and want to know more, Google has a great guide to help you further: Basics of UX.

It’s also, incidentally, the theme of our next section.

In order for a visitor to stay on your site, it needs content and pages to be a few things.

They need to be relevant, current, easy to read and navigate, and quick to load and respond.

These all make up a great user experience.

Below are the key metrics that Google uses to measure whether you are likely providing a great user experience.

For each, we have provided the key things you can work on to improve, and expandable sections for a deeper dive into how.

Core web vitals

Ah, huh! Core web vitals again.

If you’ve read that section already, you’ll understand why these measures are so important to user experience.

They’re not important enough to go through again though, so if you haven’t already, check out the section dedicated to them for optimization tips.

Search intent

Why are people searching what they’re searching for?

Are they looking for information, direction, services or to buy something?

In the world of ecommerce, this could be things like:

• Free resources to learn the ropes of ecommerce accounting.
• Sales tax advice and information for compliance.
• Recommendations of great accounting software specific to ecommerce needs.
• The services of a specialist accountant for a longer term solution.

Those first three things are more educational and information, whilst the last is transactional.

These different needs require a different approach. And if you take appropriate action, all of these things can lead to new clients.

How do I meet my visitor’s search intent?

Organic CTR

Organic click-through rate (CTR) is the number of people that click on a search engine result (that wasn’t boosted by an ad).

Your SEO strategy should be all about getting your website ranking highly on Google, and tempting searchers to click on it. If you didn’t want that, you wouldn’t be reading this guide.

A high CTR is a doubly good thing. It means you have lots of traffic, and it signals to Google that people like you, and it should rank you more highly.

How do I increase my organic CTR?

Dwell time

Dwell time is how long a visitor stays on your site before heading back to the search results page.

Dwell time is a good indicator to Google, and to you, of how interesting and relevant your page is to the visitors that land on it.

Low dwell time = not very.

This study by Moz found a direct correlation between rank and dwell time.

NB: Dwell time is similar to bounce rate, but they are different. A “bounce” is when a user leaves a website without interacting with any of the content. That’s next on the list.

How do I positively influence dwell time?

Bounce rate

The dwell time without any interactions. Bounce rates are when users visit your site but come back to Google without spending any time there.

You don’t want that.

The average bounce rate could be between 41-51%, but it seems that industry may impact this:

Source: Backlinko.

See how high landing page bounce rates are? Spending time with this guide should help you improve yours and steer clear of, potentially, a 90% bounce rate.

How do I positively influence bounce rate?

Pogo-sticking

Pogo-sticking is when a user needs to jump between a few sites to find what they’re looking for.

If the first-ranked page doesn’t satisfy their search query, then Google knows more about that site, and will likely push it down the results page.

You don’t want this for your target keywords. If you’re losing rank, this could be an indication that you’re not satisfying user intent.

How do I prevent pogo-sticking?

First up, a disclaimer: you don’t need to be a brand or content strategist to pull this off well.

You know better than anyone what your potential clients will find helpful, so let that guide you alongside any research and data.

In the last section, under Search intent, we looked at the different kinds of search queries and what content they require. These consisted of informational, navigational, commercial and transactional content.

Here’s how these might translate to the pages of an accountant’s website:

When you write your webpages, keep these intentions front of mind.

You may have some or all of these types of pages and content already, but are they optimized for search engines?

How do I optimize my content for search engines?

As a business, you need to cover some essential bases to be visible online:

• List yourself on Google My Business. It’s easy to do, right here, and will mean you show up when someone uses a map to search for local options.
• Encourage, collect and display your reviews. You might find reviews of your services around the web. Encourage these, respond to them and link to/from the great ones whenever possible.

Then take it up a notch and encourage backlinking:

• Connect and network with other sites. By reaching out to similar sites or those that you like and link to, you can simply ask them to return the favor. You could even work on a resource together and promote it across your channels.
• Guest posting. Similar to the above, you could produce content for others in exchange for a mention and link back to your site. You might find they want to do the same on yours as well.
• Create assets that are irresistibly linkable. If you assemble a report or create a graphic that is original, insightful and useful, you may find other blogs or accountants linking to it in droves.

• Ask to be included in link round-ups. A link round-up is one resource that compiles a list of others with links in one place. Look for link round-ups in your niche, and reach out to whomever produces the resource. Explain why your content is a good fit (and make sure that it is!)

  You could even check what links are currently being used. Are any out of date? Is your resource a better version? You could suggest this (gently), and try appealing to them that way.

• Review accounting software or products that you like. If you have preferred products within your industry, writing a public review is another way to encourage a link back to your site. You could include this yourself, or companies will often try to do this to prove you’re real anyway.