A Step-by-Step SEO Audit Framework Built for Accounting Firms

This guide is written for two audiences: accounting firm owners or administrators who want to understand what's wrong with their website before hiring anyone, and marketing-aware CPAs who want a structured way to evaluate an agency's diagnosis.

You don't need to be technical to work through this framework. Each layer is explained in plain language, and the tool recommendations are either free or low-cost. What you do need is about two to three hours and a willingness to look at your site objectively.

A few honest caveats before you start:

• This is a diagnostic guide, not a remediation guide. It tells you where problems exist, not always how to fix them. Some fixes are straightforward; others require a developer or experienced SEO practitioner.
• Severity varies by market. A missing H1 tag is a minor issue in a low-competition market and a meaningful drag in a major metro where competitors have fully optimized sites.
• This content is general educational guidance. It is not a substitute for a professional audit tailored to your firm's specific situation, market, and goals.

If you are a solo practitioner in a small market, you may be able to self-remediate most issues this audit surfaces. If you run a multi-partner firm competing for tax advisory or business accounting clients in a mid-to-large metro, the audit will likely surface enough to justify professional help — and this guide will give you the vocabulary to evaluate whoever you hire.

Technical issues don't always cause dramatic ranking drops. More often, they create a ceiling — your content and authority can only perform as well as your technical foundation allows. Start here before touching anything else.

Crawlability and Indexing

Use Google Search Console (free) to check your Index Coverage report. Look for pages marked as "Excluded," "Crawled but not indexed," or "Discovered but not indexed." A handful of excluded pages is normal. A large cluster of excluded service or location pages is a problem worth investigating before you write a single new word of content.

Also check your robots.txt file and XML sitemap. Both should be accessible, and your sitemap should include only canonical, indexable pages.

Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Run your homepage and two or three service pages through Google PageSpeed Insights. Pay attention to Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — the two Core Web Vitals signals that most commonly fail on accounting firm websites. Oversized images and unoptimized third-party scripts (chat widgets, scheduling tools) are the usual culprits.

Mobile Usability

Google indexes the mobile version of your site first. Search Console's Mobile Usability report will flag tap targets that are too close together, text that's too small to read, and content wider than the screen. These issues are especially common on older accounting firm sites built before 2018.

HTTPS and Security

Your site should run entirely on HTTPS. A mixed-content warning (HTTP images or scripts on an HTTPS page) can trigger browser warnings that reduce trust — particularly problematic for a financial services firm where trust is the core value proposition.

Schema Markup

Most accounting firm websites have no structured data at all. At minimum, you want LocalBusiness schema (or AccountingFirm schema) on your homepage and Service schema on individual service pages. This isn't a ranking factor on its own, but it helps Google understand what your pages are about and can improve how your listings appear in search results.

For the majority of accounting firms, local search is where new clients actually find them. Someone searching "CPA near me" or "tax accountant in [city]" is typically ready to contact a firm — these are the highest-intent queries you can rank for. Local signal audit is therefore the highest-use section of this entire framework.

Google Business Profile

Claim and access your GBP listing if you haven't already. Audit the following in order:

• Category selection: Your primary category should be "Accountant" or "Certified Public Accountant" — not a generic category like "Financial Services." Add secondary categories for your specific services (tax preparation, bookkeeping, etc.).
• NAP consistency: Your business Name, Address, and Phone number on GBP must match exactly what appears on your website and across all directory listings. Even minor variations ("St." vs "Street") can suppress Map Pack visibility.
• Business description: Should include your primary services and the city or region you serve. Many firms leave this section generic or blank.
• Photos: Listings with photos of the office, team, and signage typically perform better than bare listings. Exact benchmarks vary, but the pattern is consistent across the engagements we've run.
• Reviews: Check your total review count, average rating, and — critically — whether you are responding to reviews. Unanswered negative reviews are a trust signal problem, not just a reputation problem.

Citation Consistency

Run your firm's name through a citation tool (BrightLocal or Whitespark both have affordable options) to find inconsistent or duplicate listings across directories. Yelp, Avvo, Justia, and accounting-specific directories like CPAdirectory.com are common sources of inconsistency.

Local On-Page Signals

Each major city or service area you target should have its own page — not just a mention in your footer. These pages need to reference the location explicitly in the title tag, H1, and body copy, and should include locally relevant content beyond just swapping a city name into a template.

Content gaps are the most common issue we find on accounting firm websites — and the most fixable. Most firms have a homepage, an "About" page, and a contact form. That's not a content strategy; it's a brochure.

Service Page Audit

List every service your firm offers. Now check whether each one has a dedicated page on your website. In our experience working with accounting firms, a large portion of offered services have no standalone page — meaning Google has nothing to rank for those queries.

For each service page that does exist, evaluate:

• Word count: Pages under 400 words rarely rank for competitive terms. Most well-ranking service pages for accounting keywords contain substantially more content than this.
• Keyword focus: Does the page's title tag and H1 include a phrase that a prospect would actually search? "Tax Planning" is vague. "Tax Planning for Small Business Owners in [City]" is specific and rankable.
• Internal linking: Are your service pages linked to from other relevant pages on the site? Isolated pages rarely rank well.

Keyword Gap Analysis

Use a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush, or even the free version of Ubersuggest to compare your site's ranking keywords against one or two competitors in your market. Look for terms they rank for that you don't appear anywhere in the top 50 results for. These are your keyword gaps — and they're your content roadmap.

Thin Content and Duplication

If you have multiple location pages that are essentially identical except for the city name, Google will likely treat them as low-quality duplicate content. Each location page needs genuinely differentiated content — local landmarks, specific staff, community involvement, or market-specific service information.

Blog and Resource Content

A blog isn't mandatory, but informational content that answers questions your prospects are searching ("do I need a CPA for my LLC?" or "how does the home office deduction work?") builds topical authority and drives top-of-funnel traffic. If your site has no educational content at all, you're leaving a significant portion of the search funnel unaddressed.

Authority is the hardest layer to build and the slowest to move. That's exactly why it should be audited last — understanding your baseline before you invest in link building is essential.

Backlink Profile Baseline

Use Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz's free Link Explorer to pull your current backlink profile. You're looking for three things:

• Total referring domains: This is more meaningful than total backlinks. A site with 50 links from 50 different domains typically outperforms a site with 500 links from 5 domains.
• Link quality: Are your links coming from relevant sources — local business associations, accounting industry publications, chamber of commerce listings — or from low-relevance general directories?
• Anchor text distribution: A healthy profile has a mix of branded anchors (your firm name), generic anchors ("click here," "website"), and a smaller proportion of keyword-rich anchors. An over-optimized anchor text profile can trigger algorithmic penalties.

Competitor Authority Benchmarking

Pull the same metrics for two to three competitors who outrank you for your target terms. The gap between their domain authority and yours gives you a rough sense of how much link-building effort is required — and over what timeframe. Industry benchmarks suggest that meaningful authority gaps take 6-18 months to close, depending on market competitiveness and the consistency of your link acquisition effort.

Unlinked Brand Mentions

Search for your firm name in Google and in a tool like Ahrefs Content Explorer. Find publications or directories that mention your firm without linking to you — these are relatively easy link opportunities because the relationship already exists.

Trust Signals Beyond Links

For a financial services firm, trust signals beyond backlinks matter. These include: a physical address displayed prominently (not just in the footer), professional bios with credentials listed, AICPA membership badges used in compliance with their guidelines, and client testimonials that comply with your state board's advertising rules. These don't directly boost rankings, but they affect conversion rates from the traffic you do earn.

Not all audit findings carry the same weight. Before you start fixing things, triage what you've found by severity and impact.

Severity Tiers

Use this framework to categorize each issue you've identified:

• Critical (fix within 30 days): Site not fully indexed, Google Business Profile unclaimed or suspended, HTTPS errors, pages blocked by robots.txt that should be crawlable. These issues actively prevent Google from seeing and ranking your site.
• High (fix within 60 days): Missing service pages for core offerings, NAP inconsistencies across major directories, Core Web Vitals failures on mobile, no schema markup. These issues limit your ceiling.
• Medium (fix within 90 days): Thin service pages, missing meta descriptions, no location-specific content, sparse backlink profile. These issues slow progress but won't prevent it entirely.
• Low (address in ongoing content/SEO work): Blog content gaps, secondary keyword opportunities, image alt text, older posts that could be updated. These are optimization opportunities, not blockers.

The Self-Remediation Decision

Once you've scored your findings, ask honestly: do you have the time, technical access, and expertise to remediate what you've found? Critical and high-severity issues often require developer access and SEO experience to fix correctly. Attempting to resolve crawl issues or schema markup without that background can introduce new problems.

Many firm owners find the audit itself useful — not because they plan to fix everything themselves, but because it gives them the context to evaluate an agency's proposed scope of work and timeline. If an agency can't explain what they found in your audit and why it matters, that's a red flag worth noting.

If you want a professional diagnosis rather than working through this framework yourself, get a professional SEO audit for your accounting firm from a team that works specifically in this space.