Built for CPA firms and accounting practices
"CPA near me" runs through the local pack first, the AI surfaces second. Audit your firm's website for the on-site local signals, the per-state sales-tax content depth, and the schema graph that decides whether IRS.gov and a Big Four office own every answer to your buyer queries.
Built for independent CPAs, regional firms, and bookkeeping practices competing with H&R Block, Intuit, and the Big Four office in their metro for the local pack and for AI citations.
The diagnosis
Three failure modes we see on roughly nine out of ten CPA firms we audit. Each is structural to the vertical, not random.
The generic playbook
What is actually true for this vertical
How our audit covers it
Generic playbook
Generic SEO tools treat "accountants" as a horizontal category and never surface the local-pack reality of how CPA firm buyers actually shop.
Reality
The funnel for "CPA Baltimore" or "tax preparer near me" is local-pack first (top 3 on Google Maps), local organic second, AI citations third. Generic tools give you a backlink count and a keyword volume but never tell you that you rank #6 in the local pack while H&R Block and a Big-Four office hold #1 and #2.
Our coverage
Local pillar that reads your website: LocalBusiness or AccountingService schema type, a Google Maps link, a complete phone and address on the page, service-area URL coverage, and local wording. It does not measure your Google Business Profile, local pack rank, reviews, or directory listings; we say so in every report.
Generic playbook
Horizontal audits ignore the per-state sales-tax content surface that is the highest-leverage organic moat a CPA firm can build.
Reality
A CPA firm serving e-commerce, SaaS, or multi-state contractor clients needs deep, current, per-state sales-tax content (nexus, marketplace facilitator rules, economic thresholds). Each state is its own URL, its own schema, its own update cadence. The firms doing this rank for "sales tax in [state]" and pull in qualified inbound. Most do not.
Our coverage
Topical authority map (per service-area cluster: tax preparation, bookkeeping, sales tax, payroll, advisory) plus internal-link graph analysis that surfaces orphan pages and over-thin service-area content. We tell you which 25 new service-area pages would close the highest-ROI topical gaps.
Generic playbook
Classic SEO tools score "schema markup" as one boolean and miss the AccountingService + Organization + Person graph that AI engines specifically look for on professional-services queries.
Reality
When ChatGPT or Perplexity is asked "best CPA firm for SaaS bookkeeping in [city]", the models lean on IRS.gov, AICPA, Journal of Accountancy, plus directories (Clutch, Yelp). Firms with AccountingService schema, a credentialed Person reference for the principal, reviews earned on Google and third-party directories they do not control, and a sameAs entity graph break into the answer set. Firms with one Organization block and no Person reference do not.
Our coverage
Schema-completeness-for-ai check tuned to the accounting graph: AccountingService, LocalBusiness, Organization, Person, FAQPage. We surface what is missing and ship a paste-ready JSON-LD block per gap, with citation links to schema.org specs.
The checks, vertical-tailored
Every audit, on every plan, scores Foundational SEO, Technical SEO, Local SEO and AI Visibility at equal weight. Local SEO always applies here, because a missing address or Maps link is itself a finding. The check definitions are constant; the severity, the recommended fix, the competitor set, and the example code shift per vertical via the adapter.
Foundational pillar
Keyword universe, content depth, on-page structure, internal link graph.
Your firm-name title should follow the pattern "[Firm Name], CPAs in [City] | [Service Specialty]". Generic "Welcome to [Firm]" titles surrender the local-intent click to whoever wrote a better title above you in the SERP.
A CPA firm with three pages on sales tax (nexus overview, marketplace-facilitator rules, economic-threshold tracker) and twenty pages on personal income tax has inverted topical authority for SaaS / e-commerce clients. The audit maps your cluster depth against the service mix you actually want to win.
Tax-strategy posts are easy to write in 200-word paragraphs (it is dense material). LLMs prefer the 134 to 167 word range for citation lift. Breaking the posts up into question-shaped H2 + 150-word answer blocks roughly doubles passage extractability without losing depth.
Technical pillar
Crawl, render, schema validation, Core Web Vitals, render-parity diff.
AccountingService JSON-LD must include serviceType (e.g., "Tax Preparation", "Bookkeeping", "Advisory"), areaServed (city + state), and priceRange. Do not add aggregateRating or Review markup about your own firm: Google treats reviews a business controls about itself as self-serving, so LocalBusiness and Organization pages with that markup are ineligible for review stars. Earn reviews on your Google Business Profile and third-party directories instead. Validate against the schema.org spec, not a 2020 snapshot.
Many CPA firms run their site on a Squarespace or Webflow theme that renders service tiles via JS. AI crawlers see the empty version. The audit flags the gap and recommends the static-HTML fix (or a server-rendered alternative).
Service-area pages ("CPA Baltimore", "CPA Annapolis", "CPA Towson") frequently end up with canonicals pointing back to the homepage by mistake. The audit catches the misconfiguration and reports each duplicate-canonical case.
Local pillar
On-site local signals: LocalBusiness schema, Maps link, phone and address, service-area pages.
The audit checks that a LocalBusiness-class type such as AccountingService is declared in your JSON-LD. It does not validate the fields. We recommend adding geoCoordinates, openingHoursSpecification, and priceRange so the block is complete.
The audit reads this page for a complete phone, street address, and ZIP code fingerprint. It does not compare your listings on Google, Yelp, the AICPA member directory, your state-society directory, or the BBB; check those by hand so they match your site exactly.
The audit looks for an outbound Google Maps link on each page. Most CPA firms link only from the homepage footer; a link on every service-area page is the stronger pattern.
AI Visibility pillar
AI crawler readability, schema for AI, passage extractability, entity graph.
The accounting AI graph (AccountingService + LocalBusiness + Organization + Person + FAQPage) is one of the heaviest-payoff schema sets in any vertical. AI engines triangulate "best CPA firm for [niche]" answers against this graph.
Question-shaped H2 ("How does sales-tax nexus work for a SaaS company selling into California?") followed by a 134-167 word answer is the format ChatGPT and Perplexity lift verbatim. Tax-strategy posts are dense; restructuring them this way takes 30 minutes per post and roughly doubles citation rate.
Organization sameAs to your AICPA member listing, state-society directory page, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and (for the principal) a personal Person sameAs to LinkedIn + the state-board license verification page. AI engines treat the second-degree entity graph as a primary trust signal for professional services.
Sample findings
Three illustrative findings in the format a Accountants and CPA firms audit produces. Each carries a severity, a confidence flag, and a link to the methodology page that justifies the score.
Local pillar
The site serves three metros from the homepage alone: no internal links follow a /locations/ or /areas/ pattern, and no page links to the firm's Google Maps listing. Publish one page per metro you serve and link each to its Maps listing.
Methodology →AI Visibility pillar
We polled ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity for "best CPA firm for SaaS bookkeeping in Maryland". You were not cited on any of the three. The cited brands all publish AccountingService + Person JSON-LD and have reviews on Google and third-party directories; your site publishes Organization only. The methodology page includes a paste-ready JSON-LD block.
Methodology →Foundational pillar
You have a single "Sales tax for businesses" page covering all 50 states in 1,100 words. The firms winning "sales tax nexus in [state]" each publish 6 to 12 per-state pages with current economic-nexus thresholds, marketplace-facilitator rules, and a quarterly updated date. Topical-authority map suggests 12 high-priority per-state pages to author first.
Methodology →Glossary preview
Glossary
The SEO practice for CPA firms and accounting practices, where the funnel is local-pack first, local-organic second, AI-citations third. It differs from generic professional-services SEO in three material ways: per-state sales-tax content is the highest-leverage organic moat, AccountingService schema is the AI-citation gate, and Google reviews weigh heavily in the local pack (a signal this audit does not measure).
Read the entry →
Glossary
A schema.org JSON-LD type extending LocalBusiness for accounting and tax-preparation services. Populate serviceType (Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, Advisory, Audit), areaServed, priceRange, and provider (Person reference for the principal with a state-board license verification sameAs).
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Glossary
Google Business Profile signals for CPA firms: the most specific primary category available (typically "Certified public accountant" rather than "Accountant"), a services list that mirrors your site, regular posts and fresh photos, a steady pace of new reviews, and a response to every review. Together they decide whether the firm takes a local-pack slot from the horizontal directories.
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Glossary
A topical cluster of one page per state, covering economic nexus thresholds, marketplace-facilitator rules, and registration steps for that state. Updated quarterly. The firms doing this rank for "sales tax in [state]" and pull qualified SaaS / e-commerce inbound. Most firms have one combined page; the cluster outranks the combined page on every per-state query.
Read the entry →
Glossary
On tax and accounting questions, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity lean on IRS.gov, state revenue departments, AICPA resources such as the Journal of Accountancy, and review aggregators for "find a CPA" questions. Independent firms earn citations with AccountingService and Person markup, a complete entity graph, and credentialed, dated answers to specific questions. The mix varies by engine, so the AI visibility check samples it on questions about your business.
Read the entry →
Compliance + trust note
Accounting is professional finance and not consumer YMYL by Google's working definition, but the CPA title is licensed by each state board, so a state-CPA-license display, a credentialed-author byline on tax-strategy content, and AICPA citation hygiene are trust points worth reviewing on every service page. The audit runs two automated review checks on the page it reads: whether the CPA title is tied to named licensees, a firm permit, or a license lookup, and whether the copy makes guaranteed tax-outcome claims (Circular 230). Each is a first pass for your firm, never a compliance verdict. We do not surface tax-advice claims that should require a CPA review; we surface the public-facing SEO and entity signals.
Every audit for CPA firms runs 2 automated compliance review checks: CPA title tied to named licensees, a firm permit, or a license lookup and No guaranteed tax-outcome claims. Each one is a first pass, not legal or regulatory advice.
Five questions we hear most from CPA firms
No. The Local pillar reads your website: LocalBusiness schema type, a Google Maps link, phone and address on the page, service-area pages, and local wording. Local pack rank depends heavily on Google Business Profile signals (primary category, reviews, proximity), which the audit does not measure today. Check those directly in Google Business Profile Manager.
Yes, especially for higher-value niche work (SaaS bookkeeping, multi-state sales tax, e-commerce accounting). Buyers research in ChatGPT and Perplexity before scheduling a consultation. The free AI visibility check and paid tracking sample whether you appear in the cited answers; the audit's AI Visibility pillar grades the readiness signals behind that, such as AccountingService schema, a Person reference for the principal, and the entity graph.
GBP and listing tools (Synup, Yext, BrightLocal) manage your profile and directory listings, which we do not measure. We audit your own website: the on-site local signals, the schema graph, the per-state content depth, and the technical-SEO fundamentals, plus AI answer sampling on paid plans. The four pillars run on every audit, equal weight.
No. We surface SEO and entity signals on the public-facing surface (titles, schema, content depth, on-page phone and address, AI-citation tracking). We do not generate or recommend tax-strategy content; that is your firm's editorial domain, with your in-house CPA review. The audit does run an automated review check that flags guaranteed tax-outcome language on the page it reads, as a first pass, never a compliance verdict.
On the Pro and Agency plans, yes. White-label PDF with your firm logo on the cover on both; scheduled monthly delivery and the multi-client dashboard on Agency. The free tier is for your own firm or a single client audit; pricing is on the /pricing page.
Free. No login. Top three findings per pillar visible inline. The full report (typically 45 to 70 findings, vertical-tailored, with evidence and fix per finding) is emailed when you drop an address. CPA firms get the audit pre-set to your vertical.