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A business founder looking for an accountant first comes across online firms, comparison sites and national networks. These sites have resources your firm doesn't, I'll be frank. They have no office in your town, no partner you can meet, no clients on your street. I work on your Google Business Profile and your site so these three strengths show, within the framework set by your professional body.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroSeven results, only one firm you can walk into
A tradesman in Angoulême is setting up his company and looking for an accountant. The first six lines are online firms, comparison sites and a national network. Your firm, ten minutes from his workshop, is seventh. Move it back up.
Fig. 1. Seven results for an accountant. Only one sees clients in Angoulême. (The other six offer an online quote. None knows the tradesman's street.)
What this means for you. I highlight what these sites can't write: your address, your partners, your sectors and the option to book a meeting in person.
SEO for an accountant is the work that makes a firm visible on Google when a business owner, founder or self-employed person in its area is looking for someone to keep their books or advise them. It relies on a complete Google Business Profile, a page on the site for each service and each type of client the firm wants to take on, and content signed by the partners. It is judged by the number of serious enquiries, not by site traffic.
The problem
On “accountant” followed by a price or a legal structure, the results are held by national players selling a monthly subscription. You won't dislodge them from these general searches. However, they are barely present as soon as the search includes a town name or a specific trade.
Many firm websites fit on four pages: the team, the values, the services in a list, contact. None of these pages answers what a baker setting up shop or a doctor wanting to change accountant types in.
When the site doesn't say who you work with, everyone calls. You spend time answering enquiries that are too small or too far from your services, while the files you actually want go elsewhere.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Your everyday partner
A team that listens, supporting businesses at every stage of their growth.
Write to usFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Here are six plausible searches for a mid-sized firm. They are examples. The real list, with the volumes for your area, comes out of the audit.
What works
It answers searches that include a town. I check the category, address, opening hours, description and photos of the offices. If you have several offices, each has its own profile and page on the site, with the partner or staff member people meet there.
Bookkeeping, payroll, start-ups, business transfers, advice to owners: each service has its own searches. One page per service explains who it is for, what you actually do and what the client has to provide. The bullet list on the “Our services” page is not enough.
A tradesperson, a retailer, a doctor and a winegrower don't ask the same questions. When you know a sector well, I give it a page written in your words. It is on these specific searches that a local firm holds its own against national offers.
A business owner entrusts their accounts to a person. Each partner has their own page: background, areas of expertise, sectors they cover, registration with the professional body. Google and AIs also rely on these pages to know who is speaking on your site.
I suggest topics based on real searches. The Newp team drafts an outline for the form, and a partner approves the substance before anything goes live. Nothing appears under your name without this review, because your signature carries your professional liability.
What costs dearly
Showing a teaser price and a three-click process puts you on their ground, where they have the advantage. Your ground is the face-to-face meeting, knowledge of the local business community and follow-up by the same person.
These articles are published identically on many firm sites. Google has no reason to show yours. Three texts written for your clients are worth more than a news feed nobody reads.
“Accountancy and advice” doesn't say where the firm is. Until the town's name is in the title and the text, you don't appear on local searches.
A founder in a hurry wants a direct number or a slot to book. I put both options at the top of every page, with the name of the person who will answer.
The method
Four steps. I start by checking with you what your professional body allows, so nothing has to be taken down later.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 350 searches a month for an accountant in your town, 3% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €2,400 per client. Click-through rates by position are rough orders of magnitude, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Run the numbers with your own figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
In Charente, a firm may look after very different clients: retailers in Angoulême, trading houses and estates around Cognac, tradespeople in small towns. Online offers target the whole country and speak about none of these trades in particular. My agency is based in the département, and that is the scale at which I build your pages.
In Angoulême, the search includes the town's name. Business founders there look for a firm they can visit. A page naming Angoulême, the towns in the conurbation and your meeting days meets exactly that expectation.
Around Cognac, the vineyards support estates and the trades that depend on them. If your firm covers this sector, say so on a separate page, in your clients' vocabulary. An online firm can't write that page.
In Ruffec, Barbezieux, Confolens or La Rochefoucauld, a tradesperson looks for someone who travels or holds regular office hours locally. If you do, it should appear on the site and the profile, with the days.
Beyond Google
Business owners now ask full questions to an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral. For example: “I'm taking over a shop in Cognac with two employees, is a local firm or an online firm better, and which should I contact?”. The AI describes both options, then sometimes names a few firms.
It picks those names from what it can read: your site, your Google Business Profile, your professional body's directory, the local business press. A firm described the same way everywhere, with its services, sectors and partners, is easier to cite. “Firm in Cognac, winegrower and retailer clients, in-person meetings” gives it something to answer with. “Your trusted partner” gives it nothing.
Question asked to an AII'm taking over a shop in Cognac with two employees. Which accountant should I contact?
Three options for this takeover:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
These three firms don't exist. I made them up to show how the method adapts. Yours will have its own plan, drawn from the audit.
They have just opened their firm and have no referrals yet.
The main office has clients, the second is little known.
It handles a lot of bookkeeping and would like to support business transfers.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
A giant takes up the whole first page of your market. It has five weak spots. Take the coin and slide it into the machine.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. No towns were harmed in the making of this game.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
On general searches, no, and I don't promise you that. On searches that include a town, a trade or the need for a meeting, yes. Those are the ones I target, because they are the searches of clients who want a firm like yours.
I take it as a starting point. Before writing, we list what your professional body's rules allow. If there's any doubt about a wording, you or your professional body decide, not me.
I prepare the topics and the structure. My team writes a first draft for the form. A partner reviews, corrects the substance and approves. I publish no accounting or tax content without that approval.
That's your decision. You can explain how they are built up without giving an amount. That explanation is often enough to reassure someone comparing and to deter someone who only looks at price.
First check what your code of ethics says on this point. If it's possible, I help you do it simply, when handing over the accounts for example. If not, we work on the other signals: the profile, the pages and local citations.
Yes. The site can say who the firm works with. I choose the searches according to the clients you want, and set aside those that bring enquiries outside your target.
The Google Business Profile usually responds within a few weeks. Pages take several months to settle in. I guarantee neither a timescale nor a position. I show you each month what has moved.
Founders' searches and changes of firm follow the business calendar. I prefer to start the work a few months before those periods, so the pages are in place when demand arrives.
Not necessarily. I first check whether I can change the titles, add pages and replace the texts shared with other firms. If the tool allows it, we keep the site.
I've been doing SEO for fifteen years and have co-written four books on the subject. I don't know your profession the way you do. My role is to find what your future clients type and get you to write the right answers.
See also
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Together we look at where you stand on Google and in AI, and what should change first.
