Writing for the question, not the keyword.
Small business owners search in plain language. Meeting them there is what turned content into enquiries rather than sessions.
Accountancy ·Bristol
Top 3 for the terms that win work in Bristol.
Reed & Co wanted to grow inside their own city. They were standing next to brands that had been established for years, and we were new on the block. Here is how that went.
Top 3
Local terms
The searches that actually bring work in Bristol.
×4
Organic traffic
Against the previous year, inside eight months.
Earned
Links from reputable sites
Built by publishing things that were worth linking to.
Client
Reed & Co Accountants
Industry
Accountancy (small business specialists)
Location
Bristol
Services
SEO · Content · Links · Local
Established competitors, and not much presence to stand on.
Reed & Co are a Bristol based accountancy focused on helping small businesses with their tax returns. They wanted to grow within their local area, and they knew they could be doing more through their online channels.
The difficulty was who they were standing next to. When we started working with them they were up against brands that had been long established in Bristol. We were new on the block.
They did not have a large digital presence at the time. That is why we wanted to do more than simply increase rankings. Rankings on their own would not have built a practice that could be found.
The same practice, found in a different place.
No chart. The comparison is the chart.
Before
- Outranked by long established local brands
- Little digital presence beyond the website itself
- No content aimed at what their clients were searching for
- A backlink profile with very little behind it
- Growth resting on word of mouth
After
- Top 3 for their local terms
- Competing directly with the established Bristol names
- Content built around what small businesses actually ask
- Links earned from reputable sites
- Organic traffic up over 4x on the previous year
Three phases, named by what they did.
Content first, then the links, then the work of making sure anyone saw either.
Phase 01
Content their clients were searching for.
Our first job was to create the content their ideal customers were already looking for. Not keyword pages, but answers to the things a small business actually asks an accountant.
Phase 02
Assets built to earn links.
The biggest challenge was building links from reputable sites. Rather than chase them one at a time, we created content that was likely to generate links on its own merits.
Phase 03
Promotion, so the work was found.
Publishing is not enough. We promoted what we made to make sure the backlinks actually arrived, and kept the assets useful so they carried on earning.
The decisions that disproportionately mattered.
Three choices did most of the work.
Earning links by being useful.
Our SEO for accounting firms is built around long term success, so we build assets that generate links just by being worth reading.
Going after the terms that carry intent.
Top 3 for a local term is worth more to a Bristol practice than page one for something national and vague.
What it added up to.
Inside eight months, organic traffic had grown to over 4x what the previous year had delivered, and Reed & Co were holding top 3 positions for their local terms.
They are competing with the established names now rather than sitting behind them. There is still a long way to go, and that is rather the point of the work.
Your version of this
Up against the established names?
Send us your URL. We will run your site through the same first pass we ran on Reed & Co, and send back a 15 minute video walkthrough of what we would do. Or whether we are the right people to do it.