SEO audits for accounting firms
Accounting firms sell expertise, and their websites usually say very little about what that expertise covers. Nearly four in ten publish no structured data at all.
What we found
Across 136 firm websites found by searches for 'accountant', the average was 79.6 and half scored 84 or better. The sites are typically competent and dated: built properly some years ago and left alone since.
Alt text was the most common fault, missing on 47% of sites; among the ten trades we have 40 or more sites for, only medical practices missed it more often. Title tags were close behind at 45%: firms name pages 'Services' rather than 'Small Business Tax Returns', which is what somebody actually types.
Structured data was third, absent on 53 sites (39%). It matters here because accounting queries are strongly seasonal and increasingly answered by assistants rather than by a click.
Every fault, and how often
Half the sites scored 84 or more. By band: 62.5% scored 80 to 100, 26.5% 60 to 79, 8.1% 40 to 59 and 2.9% under 40. Of the businesses these searches found, 12.5% had no website at all.
| Fault | Sites with it | Points it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Images missing alt text | 47% (64 of 136) | 6 |
| Title tag length | 45% (61 of 136) | 4 |
| No structured data | 39% (53 of 136) | 8 |
| Meta description length | 32% (44 of 136) | 3 |
| No H1 heading | 28% (38 of 136) | 8 |
| No Open Graph tags | 27% (37 of 136) | 4 |
| Missing meta description | 25% (34 of 136) | 12 |
| No sitemap.xml | 18% (25 of 136) | 6 |
| Multiple H1 headings | 18% (24 of 136) | 3 |
| Missing canonical link | 16% (22 of 136) | 4 |
| Not served over HTTPS | 10% (13 of 136) | 15 |
| Thin content, under 200 words | 9% (12 of 136) | 8 |
| No robots.txt | 6% (8 of 136) | 5 |
| No mobile viewport tag | 4% (5 of 136) | 10 |
| Missing title tag | 2% (3 of 136) | 12 |
Measured October 2026 from ppclift's own audits of sites found by searches for ‘accountant’, each website counted once however many searches found it; sites that could not be read are left out, the same way as the research post. Points are out of the 100-point score.
Sample finding
On accounting sites, missing Open Graph tags and missing structured data go together. Of the 37 firms with no Open Graph tags, 31 (84%) also had no structured data, against 39% of firms overall. Both are metadata a developer adds on purpose; when one is absent the other usually is too, which points to sites built before either was routine and not touched since. It also makes them easy to find: check one, and you have a good guess at the other.
What a typical site is missing
The median firm site scores 84. The faults most likely to make up the difference are alt text (6 points, 47% of firms), the title tag (4 points, 45%) and structured data (8 points, 39%). In practice that is an afternoon of metadata on a site the owner thinks of as finished, which makes it an easy proposal: no redesign, a fixed price, and a before and after you can show in a search result.
How to pitch it
- Seasonality is the hook. The weeks before the end of financial year are when this matters, and a firm that is invisible in June has lost a year.
- Service-specific pages are usually the biggest opportunity, because many firms have a single Services page covering eight distinct offerings.
- Point out that a competitor with structured data is more likely to be the one an assistant names when asked for a local accountant.
Questions about accountants
When is the best time to pitch an accounting firm?
Before tax time, not during it. In Australia that means the months leading up to 30 June: a firm is too busy to start a project in July and August, and the searches it wants to win cluster around the deadline.
Should a firm have one services page or several?
Several. A single Services page covering everything can only rank for the firm's name. A page each for individual tax returns, small business accounting, SMSF and bookkeeping gives each service its own title and its own chance at a search, and 61 of the 136 sites already failed the title-length check on the pages they have.
Do accountants need Open Graph tags?
If they share anything, yes. A firm posting a tax-time update to LinkedIn gets a bare link without them, and 37 of the 136 sites had none.
Is HTTPS still a problem for accounting firms?
More than you would expect. 13 of the 136 firm sites were not served over HTTPS, a rate only medical practices exceeded among the ten trades we have 40 or more sites for. For a business that asks clients to send financial documents, raise that before any ranking argument.
Check your own site. Audit any accountant website in seconds. Run a free audit and see every check on one page, with no account required.
Doing this for a client? Checking one accountant at a time is slow. ppclift is SEO lead generation software that audits every local business in a suburb at once, so you can find SEO clients who already need this work. Free plan, no card.