Online accountants scale from local practice to Ireland-wide

The client was rebranding a practice that targeted a local area in Donegal to build a company that attracted clients online only across the whole of Ireland. They had recently rebranded, changed the company name, and migrated the website from an old domain to a new one.

The redirects from the old domain were incomplete. Only the home page was redirecting, which meant the content on the old site was duplicated on the new site. Setting up 301 redirects quickly solved this duplicate content issue.

The goal for the engagement was clear: turn a regional accountancy brand into a national, content-led B2B business that could win small business clients across Ireland through organic search.

The challenge was to help turn the company into a fully fledged content marketing machine. They had published some blog posts and service pages, but the website was weak due to a lack of backlinks, and there was no coherence to the content or the plan behind it.

In a B2B accountancy market where trust signals and authority matter, the site needed both technical credibility and a clear editorial direction before it could compete for commercial keywords.

We started with a technical and content audit to determine if any of the existing content was worth keeping and to uncover every issue blocking growth.

There were many issues:

• Dates in URLs
• Low quality content
• A lot of technical issues
• No redirects from the previous website
• Lack of inbound links

The work to fix the technical issues took two months before we could focus fully on growth activities.

As with all projects, we made sure to deliver a visible difference quickly to earn the client’s trust. That meant front-loading the work that drives organic visits, and leaving some essential but slower tasks until after the first few months. As with almost all websites, the quickest return came from publishing high quality content.

Competition Research

The client was almost the first in the Irish accountancy market to target the term online accountants. We mapped out all the possible competitors, which were often broader business websites rather than direct rivals.

Keyword and Content Planning

We created a list of primary keywords to build content around. These keywords were aimed at all three levels of the buying cycle, so the site could attract early researchers as well as buyers ready to switch accountant.

Publishing

All of the content was written in-house. We trained the content team to create content that was the right length and properly structured to rank quickly on Google.

Link Building

The website was weak due to the lack of links from other websites. We started reaching out to other sites, asking to be published, and built a steady stream of relevant referring domains.

Analytics and Optimisation

Using analytics, we recorded which pages resulted in customer sign-ups, optimised those pages further, and created more content around the topics that converted.

It is easy for SEO companies to talk about driving X traffic and getting a high percentage of growth. We were spectacular in traffic growth. But, at the same time, the company has grown from a six-person firm to now having over seventy employees.

• January 2017 baseline: around 400 visitors a month from Google.
• January 2018: over 8,500 visitors a month from Google.
• Since publication: traffic has doubled again.
• Headcount growth: from six employees to over seventy.
• Brand evolution: AccountantOnline has since rebranded to Kinore.

The essence of this project has been great content, link building and customer service. In many ways the project has been simple, but the competition and keyword research created a foundation that everything else could be built on.

For B2B service businesses, the lesson is that SEO compounds when it sits on top of a real product and a competent team. Fixing the technical issues, owning a clear category position (online accountants for Ireland), training an in-house writing team and earning links over time turned a small regional practice into a national brand. We are happy to be still working with this client.