Local SEO for CPA firms
What makes your practice show up when someone nearby searches for a CPA, what is probably wrong with yours right now, and why all of it has to be finished before January.
No jargon, and nothing you have to connect to read it. The checks on this page are the ones Verand actually runs, in the words it actually uses.
- Name
- Example Tax & Advisory CPAs
- Phone
- (555) 010-0147
- Directory category
- Not chosen
Address, city and hours read too. Found on /contact and 2 other pages, in your page text and your page code. Nothing connected, nothing extra billed.
An example, not a real practice. The wording, tabs and score line are the ones the product uses; the findings are made up so you can see the shape of one.
Almost nobody searches for a CPA in September. Then January arrives.
Every other local business gets an even year. You do not. Your searchers arrive in one narrow window, in a hurry, and most call one of the first three results and stop. What decides which three was settled months earlier, which makes this a calendar problem before it is a marketing problem. A practice that starts tidying its listing in February has already sat out the quarter that was going to pay for it.
Does anything say what you do?
A tax preparer, a bookkeeper and a licensed CPA are three different answers, and the searcher usually wants one in particular. Your listing carries a single primary category. Both it and your own pages have to say which you are in a form a machine can read rather than infer.
How close are you to them?
You cannot move the office and no tool can. You can make sure the address every source holds is right to the character, including the suite number half your pages leave out.
How sure is Google that you exist?
It counts independent sources that agree on your name, address and phone, and reads reviews from real clients. Agreement is the signal, and a practice that has run a seasonal second line for years usually has more disagreement than it knows.
Eight checks on your own website, and the one ranked lowest is the one that will cost you April.
Verand already reads every page of your site on a schedule. Your office details come out of that same read: nothing to install, nothing to connect, nothing on top of the crawl that was happening anyway.
Your own site shows two different phone numbers
- What we found
-
(555) 010-0147 on /contactPick one, use it everywhere.
(555) 010-0192 on /tax-season - Why it matters
- Directories treat each version as a separate business, so your standing gets split between two half-practices and sometimes both get buried. This has to be right before any listing work, or the wrong number is copied into dozens of places, each needing its own correction.
- Doing it yourself
- An hour or two to find and correct every instance, then a re-check.
- Who fixes it
- You A seasonal overflow line is a real business decision and Verand has no view on it. It names the pages; you decide which number the world gets.
Your opening hours are written down, but only in a sentence
- What we found
- “Monday to Friday, 9 to 5” on /contact, in your page text. Nothing in your page code states them, so nothing outside your site can read them.
- Why it matters
- For a dentist this is a low-severity tidy-up, which is why the product ranks it low and we will not pretend otherwise. For you it is the field that changes twice a year. A practice that opens Saturdays from February and says so nowhere a machine can read is telling the busiest searchers of its year it is shut.
- Doing it yourself
- Thirty minutes to write the block, then an edit every time the season turns, on the two dates you least have a spare half hour.
- Who fixes it
- One click, Verand It writes hours into the entry when it knows them, taking them from your Business Profile if that is the only place they live. If nobody has stated them anywhere it leaves the field out and says so, rather than guessing at nine o’clock.
{ "@type": "AccountingService", "name": …, "address": { … }, "telephone": …, "geo": { … }, "openingHoursSpecification": [ … ], "areaServed": [ … ], "sameAs": [ … ] }
The other six: name, address and phone present; a contact page; a link from your site to your Google listing; map coordinates; the area you serve; and whether more than one address is showing up. Each comes back with the same four lines, and nothing sits behind a button.
You are a local business and a remote one, and both are true at once.
Half your clients could not find your building and have never tried. The other half chose you because you are eleven minutes away and wanted to hand over a carrier bag of receipts. Local advice assumes you are only the second kind; content advice, only the first.
- Someone within driving distance searching in Februarythe map block
- The office, the hours, the parking, the person on the phoneyour listing
- Independent sources agreeing on one addresscitations
- A founder three states away with a K-1 problemordinary search
- What you have written about the thing they are worried aboutyour articles
- Whether an assistant repeats your answer when askedAI search
A page about your office is advertising, and you signed up to rules about that.
There is no gentler rule for the page that lists your address. If it exists to bring you clients it is advertising, and the AICPA Code holds it to the same standard as anything else you publish. If it mentions representing anyone before the IRS, Circular 230 reaches it too. That would be a footnote, except that the sentences which get a CPA in front of a board are the ones people write on exactly that page, in January, in a hurry.
“Walk in this season and pay nothing unless we get you a bigger refund.”
StoppedA fee tied to the size of the refund on an original return is the one pricing sentence you are not allowed to write, and it sits on a lot of seasonal pages because it converts. The page does not move until the fee is quoted fixed or hourly.
“Our founder spent eleven years at the IRS, so we still know who to call.”
StoppedThe first half is a credential and belongs on the page. The second says you can lean on somebody, which is a claim of influence, and those are not allowed however lightly meant. Keep the eleven years, lose the phone call.
“Book a risk-free review of last year’s return.”
Asks youThis one you can release, but only by writing down why, and the note stays attached to the page. The ones you cannot release are a guaranteed refund or result, “you can’t lose”, and a missing disclaimer.
Stops, and will not move
No reading of the sentence is acceptable. No override, no exception, on any plan.
- fee only if we get a bigger refund
- connections inside the IRS
- guaranteed refund
- guaranteed results
- you can’t lose
- a missing disclaimer
Stops, and asks you
A legitimate professional use exists and a machine cannot tell the difference. You release them with a written reason that stays attached to the page.
- risk-free
- zero-risk
- no-risk
Every local SEO tool will happily write that office page for you. None read it back against the Code you are held to. That is the only reason this page exists. What else on your site counts as advertising is a longer question, and a page of its own.
Validated against AICPA and Treasury rules. AI-researched and operator-reviewed. Your counsel confirms applicability to your practice and your state board. Not legal advice.
Four things happen to your office, and only the last one costs money.
You have seen the diagnosis, which Verand gives away, and the gate, which nothing else in this category runs. Here is the whole of it, in order, with the honest status of each.
It reads your office
Out of the pages you already publish, inside the crawl that was running anyway.
Running · no extra costIt hands you a list
Eight checks, each saying what is wrong, why it matters and what fixing it yourself takes.
RunningIt writes, and it gates
The machine-readable entry in one click. The page goes through the same checks as everything else you publish.
RunningIt gets you repeated
Your details submitted, on purpose, to the places other sources copy from.
$500 once, per officeGetting your details repeated, on purpose.
Search engines decide a business is real by counting independent sources that agree about it, and most practices leave that to chance. This is how you stop: five wholesalers and around fifty directory listings, one submission per office, $500, and nothing goes out until your own details are complete, consistent, and you have read every character.
We could call the whole ninety-four-site pool “established directories, selected for your category”. About eighty are not that, and you would find out the moment you clicked three. So here is the real split.
Two rows carry initials rather than a mark. GPS Network is a distribution network rather than a site you can visit, so it has none, and neither does most of the long tail, which is the point of that row.
- Category
- Not set
- Rating
- 4.8
- Reviews
- 4
- Hours
- Published
- Phone
- (555) 010-0147
- Address
- 128 Example Street
Read from the public listing. No sign-in, so nothing to authorise and nothing to revoke.
It reads your listing. It never touches it.
There is no sign-in for this one, and there cannot be. It reads only what any member of the public can see, so there is nothing to authorise and nothing to revoke.
A listing is only accepted as yours when your own website address, phone or street confirms it. If nothing lines up you get the candidates and pick, rather than Verand attaching one that might belong to the unit next door.
A second office means two of everything.
Not one bigger version of everything. Each address has one Google listing, one set of directory entries and one page of its own, and each page is checked against the rules of the state that office is in, which for a practice licensed in two is not a detail.
Made-up addresses, in the range reserved for examples. The three-variant pattern is the common one.
Example Tax & Advisory CPAs128 Example Street, Suite 300 · (555) 010-0147
- Its own Business Profile1
- Its own directory submission$500
- Its own page, its own checks8 + 6
- Gated against its own state boardPass
Added by hand, once9 Example Road · (555) 010-0163
- Its own Business Profile1
- Its own directory submission$500
- Its own page, its own checks8 + 6
- Gated against its own state boardits state
What runs today, and what does not.
Running nowLive
- Reading your office out of your own pages. Inside the crawl already running. No extra cost, nothing to connect.
- The eight on-site checks and the list they produce. Every item carries what is wrong, why it matters and what doing it yourself takes.
- The Google listing check. Six checks on the public listing, on its own tab, no sign-in.
- Writing the machine-readable business entry. One click, gaps left out rather than invented.
- The gate on the page itself. The same checks your articles go through, on your location page.
- Directory submission. $500 once, per office. Nothing is sent until you have read every character.
Not builtHonest
- Anything that writes to your Google listing. No posts, no review replies, no edits to any field, your season hours included.
- The deeper look inside your own listing. The one that needs you to connect it. It waits on an approval from Google we have not got.
- Working out on its own that you have two offices. Verand will say it can see more than one address and stop there. You add the second by hand.
- Writing your contact page for you in one click. A contact page is a whole published page rather than a block of code, so it goes through the normal writing and publishing route.
- Reminding you the season is coming. There is no seasonal prompt in the product. The calendar argument on this page is yours to act on.
The four things partners ask first.
It is autumn and I am quiet. Is it too early to bother?
It is the only sensible time. Your own site can be corrected in an afternoon whenever you like, but the part that depends on other people settles over weeks. Start in the autumn and January finds a practice whose details already agree everywhere. Start in February and you are buying visibility for a quarter that is nearly done.
We run a second phone line only during the season. Is that the problem?
The line is not the problem. Publishing both numbers as though each belongs to the business is. Directories treat two numbers as two businesses and split your standing between them. Pick the one number that goes everywhere public, handle the seasonal line inside your own phone system, and the audit stops complaining.
Will it write the page about my office?
Yes, and it goes through exactly the same checks as every other page Verand writes for you, the advertising rules included. Nothing publishes on its own. It arrives as a draft, and someone at the practice presses publish.
Most of my clients are nowhere near me. Does any of this apply?
Partly. The eight checks cost nothing either way, because they run inside a crawl you already pay for, and if you have a building and a phone the tidying is worth an afternoon. The $500 submission is only worth it if walk-in distance is a real part of how you get clients. If it is not, the same money spent on what you publish will do more.
Where this goes next.
Verand and Google Business Profile
What the listing check reads, how it decides a listing is yours, and everything it will never touch.
/google-business-profile The whole pictureAI content for CPA firms
The rules that load when you name your regulator, the gate every draft hits, and what stays yours.
/cpasFind out which of the eight your practice is failing.
The diagnosis is free and none of it is blurred. Every item says what is wrong, why it matters and what fixing it yourself takes, whether or not you ever ask us to do it.
Nothing publishes without someone at your practice pressing publish. Validated against AICPA and Treasury rules; AI-researched and operator-reviewed. Not legal advice.