SEO for professional services is the work that puts an accountant, an architect, a financial adviser or a surveyor in front of people who search Google for "accountant london", "architect near me" or "independent financial adviser" without knowing their name. It rests on three pieces: the Google Business Profile with its reviews, a website with one page for each service and each location, and a small amount of content on questions that HMRC or the local council explain badly.
The practitioner's name comes later. It's the result, not the starting point.
So who are you up against?
It depends. And the difference is huge.
An accountant in London competes with 3 Google Business Profiles, a carousel of 5 directories and two review sites on page one.
An online accountant competes with The Accountancy Partnership, which ranks for 8,679 keywords and draws an estimated 76,231 visits a month.
Two different games. The first thing to decide is which one you're playing.
The mistakes we see most often on firms' websites all point the wrong way:
- the site built around the practitioner's name, with the biography on the homepage;
- a single "services" page instead of one page for each service people search for;
- a blog of tax guides written to beat sites with thousands of keywords and years of head start.
So why listen to us?
Because the architecture that works for a firm is the same one we use on B2B projects. On Macropix 79 keywords out of 135 are on page one because each product has its own page. On Sunscape we went from 1 to 38 keywords on page one in six months.
Here you'll find:
- the SERPs measured with DataForSEO in September 2026 for accountants and architects;
- the comparison between a national leader and a local London firm;
- what search is worth for each profession;
- what a firm that actually ranks does, page by page;
- Google profile, personal brand and measurement.
Lawyers, therapists and dentists have numbers of their own: SEO for lawyers, SEO for therapists and SEO for dentists.
Let's start with the results page.
How clients search for an accountant or an architect (5 directories, 3 listings, 8 firms)
Someone searching "accountant london" first sees a carousel of 5 directories, then a local pack with 3 listings, then ten organic results: eight firms and two review and referral sites. We pulled the SERP (3,600 searches a month, CPC £9.48) on desktop, Google UK, searched from London, on 26 September 2026.
The "Find results on" carousel: Bark, Yell, Tipped, a Facebook video and Infoisinfo.
The local pack:
- Perrys Chartered Accountants: 37 reviews, 4.9;
- Clarkwell & Co: 106 reviews, 5.0;
- Mysimplytax: 58 reviews, 5.0.
The ten organic results, in order: saffery.com, londonaccountants.co, unbiased.co.uk, accountsandlegal.co.uk, perrysaccountants.co.uk, hwfisher.co.uk, vouchedfor.co.uk, howladerandco.com, fusionaccountants.co.uk, oasisaccountants.co.uk.
Eight firms, two review and referral sites. No AI Overview and no ads in the snapshot.
And the related searches?
"Accountant London jobs" and "Accountant London salary".
It means some of the people typing "accountant london" are looking for a job, not an accountant. A detail that comes in handy when choosing negative keywords in the companion article on Google Ads.
The "People also ask" questions? All about money: "How much does an accountant cost in London?", "Is it worth paying an accountant?", "Do accountants give free advice?".
The related searches add "free", "independent", "for self-employed", "small business".
People looking for an accountant want to know what they'll pay before they call.
And for architects?
The SERP takes a different shape.
On "architect london" (2,400 searches, CPC £8.75) there's an image pack at the top, then a "Find results on" carousel of trade directories (Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Yell, Bark, Cylex) and a local pack with three practices.
The organic results:
- a Houzz list ("Best 15 Architects in London");
- an Instagram profile;
- seven practices with their homepage or a London page: Architecture for London, Extension Architecture, MATA Architects, Corstorphine & Wright, YARD Architects, qR Architects, Make Architects.
Here too, two of the four "People also ask" questions are about cost.
Recommended reading: how to read search intent from a SERP.
Local or national: two markets in the same profession (105 times the traffic, and still not on the same page)
"Online accountant" has 1,000 searches a month in the UK, less than a third of "accountant london", but a CPC of £43.28 and a completely different SERP: no local pack, no directories, seven national online firms out of nine organic results. Competition is high (DataForSEO, Google UK, September 2026).
At the top there's an AI Overview quoting prices "from £15 per month".
The seven national firms: theaccountancy.co.uk, morethanaccountants.co.uk, a-wise.co.uk, cheaperaccountant.co.uk, mazumamoney.co.uk, hippoaccountants.com, gorillaaccounting.com. The other two results are a Reddit thread and a review site.
This is the gap in scale between the two markets.
| Domain | Model | Organic keywords | Estimated visits/month | Equivalent Ads value | Keywords with a city |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| theaccountancy.co.uk | online accountant for sole traders and small companies | 8,679 | 76,231 | £271,818/month | 0% |
| londonaccountants.co | local small business firm in London | 67 | 725 | £7,397/month | 45% |
The Accountancy Partnership has 105 times the traffic of London Accountants.
So London Accountants lost?
No. London Accountants is second for "accountant london" in the live SERP. And The Accountancy Partnership doesn't appear on that search.
Two strategies that never touch.
The choice is made before you write a single line:
- if you see clients in your office and your catchment is a city or a county, the game is local: Google profile, service pages with the city, reviews;
- if you work remotely with sole traders and companies across the UK, the game is national and is won with content and brand, at a different level of investment.
What search is worth for each profession ("near me" beats the city 12,100 to 3,600)
Volume and CPC of the sector keywords tell you two things: where the demand is and how much advertisers pay for it, which is a good indicator of what a client is worth.
| Keyword | Searches/month | Average CPC | Top of page bid (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| accountant | 40,500 | £11.92 | £12.38 |
| financial adviser | 22,200 | £19.08 | £17.47 |
| register as self employed | 18,100 | £4.61 | £7.10 |
| set up limited company | 14,800 | £25.93 | £64.78 |
| accountants near me | 12,100 | £7.77 | £11.10 |
| architect near me | 6,600 | £5.20 | £6.94 |
| structural engineer near me | 6,600 | £3.46 | £3.86 |
| independent financial adviser | 4,400 | £20.78 | £20.97 |
| accountant london | 3,600 | £9.48 | £12.60 |
| architect london | 2,400 | £8.75 | £6.38 |
| accountant manchester | 1,900 | £9.22 | £12.13 |
| surveyor near me | 1,900 | £7.01 | £9.76 |
| financial adviser near me | 1,900 | £20.89 | £23.64 |
| online accountant | 1,000 | £43.28 | £49.78 |
| structural engineer london | 1,000 | £6.44 | £7.07 |
| surveyor london | 480 | £8.00 | £15.46 |
| financial adviser london | 210 | £16.09 | £13.65 |
Three things the table says on its own.
One: financial advisers and the "online" and company formation searches have the highest CPCs.
"Online accountant" at £43.28 is the most expensive click on the list, followed by "set up limited company" at £25.93. Because someone setting up a company picks an accountant who will look after them for years.
Two: "near me" is bigger than the city.
"Accountants near me" has 12,100 searches, more than three times "accountant london". "Surveyor near me" 1,900 against 480 for "surveyor london". "Structural engineer near me" 6,600 against 1,000.
So how do you catch them?
Not with a page. With the Google Business Profile and the physical location of the office.
Three: for financial advisers local demand barely exists.
"Financial adviser london" has 210 searches. "Independent financial adviser" 4,400. "Financial adviser" 22,200, with peaks of 33,100 in September 2025 and January and February 2026.
A financial adviser plays on specialism (independent, pensions, inheritance tax planning), not on the city.
One limit of the data, to be fair: for many niche keywords the planner returns zero even though demand exists. Search Console, after a few months of site history, is more reliable than the planner for long queries.
Recommended reading: how to do keyword research.
What a local firm that actually ranks does (67 keywords, 725 visits, second in London)
London Accountants is the most useful example in the London SERP because it's a small firm, not a platform: 67 organic keywords and 725 estimated visits a month are numbers a single practice can reach.
The profile of its keywords is the opposite of The Accountancy Partnership's:
- 55% commercial;
- 45% with a city;
- the top 15 keywords bring 90% of the traffic.
The homepage, in DataForSEO's database, is:
- third for "accountants london" (3,600 searches);
- first for "accounting services in london" (210);
- fifth for "small business accountants in london" (390, CPC £28.18);
- fourth for "accountants for small business london" (210, CPC £31.87).
Then there are the articles. And this is where the lesson is.
It doesn't write about UTR numbers or the Government Gateway, where The Accountancy Partnership already ranks third and ninth.
So what does it write about?
Things a business client asks and finds poorly explained online:
- "mandatory payrolling of benefits": position 7, 140 searches, CPC £12.72;
- "what is a cogs": position 4, 590 searches;
- "cogs in accounting": position 3.
Searches of a few hundred a month at most, made by people running a business who have a concrete question.
The architecture that works (the same as Macropix)
The site architecture that works for a local firm is the same one we see in B2B projects such as Macropix, where 79 keywords out of 135 are on page one because each product has its own page.
Translated for a professional firm:
- a homepage that states the profession, the city and who you work for in the first two lines (London Accountants ranks it for a dozen commercial keywords);
- one page for each service with a name people search for: "self assessment tax return", "limited company accounts", "payroll", "planning drawings for a house extension", not "services";
- one page for each office or city served, if you have more than one;
- a blog with 10 to 20 articles on specific questions you can answer better than HMRC, not 200 articles on everything.
The model holds in any UK town: an accountancy practice in Leeds or an architecture studio in Bristol has the same three levers (profile, service pages, niche content), with a different local pack and a different set of directories.
Recommended reading: how to structure an SEO-friendly website.
The national model: answering the questions HMRC explains badly
Where a national leader gets its traffic (84 informational keywords out of 100)
Of The Accountancy Partnership's top 100 keywords, 84 are informational, 10 navigational, 5 commercial and 1 transactional, and none contains a city. The top ones by traffic:
- "accountancy": 40,500 searches, position 1;
- "government gateway login": 246,000, position 9;
- "utr number": 27,100, position 3;
- "personal tax account": 90,500, position 9;
- "tax code checker": 14,800, position 4;
- "35k after tax": 6,600, position 2.
It also does it with tools. Its salary calculator ranks for "salary calculator" and "take home pay calculator" (301,000 searches each, positions 18 to 27), and the tax code checker is fourth for its own query.
The mechanism: catch people searching how a tax obligation works, convert a tiny share into clients and build a brand.
"The accountancy partnership" has 3,600 searches a month: direct demand bought with years of content and advertising.
Why a sole practitioner shouldn't copy it (three numbers)
Starting a blog of tax guides is the most expensive and least profitable route for a local firm, even though it's the most common advice from people selling marketing to professional firms. The data say so in three ways.
One: on those keywords the space is taken.
The Accountancy Partnership is third for "utr number" and fourth for "tax code checker", and HMRC and GOV.UK sit above everyone on this kind of query. Moving them takes years and a domain authority a small firm doesn't build.
Two: AI Overviews eat the guides.
56% of the SERPs in The Accountancy Partnership's top 100 have an AI Overview. Guides on UTR numbers and tax codes are the first to lose clicks, because Google answers on its own.
The live SERP for "accountant london"? No AI Overview.
Three: local keywords are worth more per click.
The average CPC of London Accountants' keywords is £13.24, The Accountancy Partnership's £4.98.
So do the sum: an article ranking for "mandatory payrolling of benefits" at 140 searches is worth more to a London firm than a guide to the Government Gateway at 246,000.
The person reading it is one step away from a phone call.
Recommended reading: how AI Overviews work and what they change for traffic.
Writing tax guides nobody finds?
The Accountancy Partnership is already third for "utr number" and more than half of its SERPs have an AI Overview. A local firm ranks on searches of 140 a month that turn into phone calls: in 30 minutes we'll look together at which ones are yours.
Book a strategy consultationThe Google Business Profile is worth as much as the website (37 to 106 reviews, all 4.9 or 5.0)
For the "near me" search (12,100 a month) the Google profile is almost the only thing that counts: the local pack sits above the organic results. The 3 listings in the pack for "accountant london" have between 37 and 106 reviews, all rated 4.9 or 5.0.
What moves the profile in local projects comes down to three things:
- the primary category: "Accountant", "Architect", NOT "Business services";
- the number and freshness of reviews;
- consistency of name, address and phone number across profile, website and directories.
The directories in the carousel are there for that. They rarely bring a client, but they keep consistent the data Google uses to trust the profile.
Bark, first in the carousel, and Unbiased, third in the organic results, are the ones that also sell enquiries. For a fee.
Reviews have to be asked for. A firm that files a set of year-end accounts or hands over planning drawings has a natural moment to do it.
And the rules?
Professional firms in the UK can advertise, but the ASA's CAP Code applies: claims must not mislead and objective claims need evidence.
Only members of a chartered body (ICAEW, ICAS, CAI, or ACCA for "chartered certified") can call themselves chartered accountants. "Architect" is a title protected by the Architects Act 1997 and reserved for people on the ARB register.
A profile with real reviews and a page explaining what you do is fine. An ad for "the best accountant in London" is a claim you'd have to prove.
Recommended reading: guide to Google Business Profile and local SEO.
Personal brand is measured in searches for your name (50 against 12,100)
The name of a local firm is worth a tiny share of the demand it can catch: "clarkwell" has 50 searches a month, while "accountant london" has 3,600 and "accountants near me" 12,100. Clarkwell has 106 reviews and a place in the London local pack, and its name is still worth about 1% of the local demand it can reach.
That's the figure that puts in proportion the approach many practitioners start from: surname in the domain, biography on the homepage, a polished LinkedIn.
So brand doesn't matter?
It does. But in the opposite direction.
First you catch generic demand, then the name starts being searched. The Accountancy Partnership got to its 3,600 brand searches afterwards.
Where the name counts straight away is in how Google judges the trustworthiness of the site:
- an "about" page with your professional body membership and number, specialisms and a real photo;
- a linked LinkedIn profile;
- a Google profile with the same name.
These are the signals we describe in E-E-A-T.
For a financial adviser the FCA registration should be stated clearly, because the Financial Services Register is the first thing a client checks.
Architects, surveyors, engineers and financial advisers: what changes (three different markets)
The method is the same as for accountants, but the demand sits somewhere else: on the type of project for architects, on proximity for surveyors and engineers, on the topic for financial advisers. The accountant is the most measurable case; the method adapts.
Architects. "Architect near me" has 6,600 searches, "architect london" 2,400 and "architecture firms london" 1,600.
The SERP has an image pack, a carousel of trade directories and a Houzz "best 15" list. So getting into those lists and directories is digital PR work (relationships with sites and publications) worth as much as the site's SEO.
The portfolio is the content that ranks, if every project has its own page with the type of work and the borough instead of one gallery. "Architect london extension" and "residential architect london" are among the related searches, and "loft conversion architect" (590 searches, CPC £6.22) and "house extension architect" (480, £6.05) peak in autumn: a "house extensions in London" page is worth more than a "projects" page.
Surveyors and structural engineers. Demand is almost all local and proximity-based: "structural engineer near me" 6,600, "surveyor near me" 1,900, "structural engineer london" 1,000, "surveyor london" 480, with CPCs of £3.46 to £8.00.
Here the Google profile and pages by job (building survey, party wall, structural calculations, building regulations drawings) do the work. The blog helps little.
Financial advisers. Demand is national and topic-based. "Independent financial adviser" at 4,400 searches and a CPC of £20.78 is the keyword to hold if you're independent.
Pages by topic (pensions, inheritance tax, retirement income) beat pages by city. Advisers are regulated by the FCA, whose rules require financial promotions to be clear, fair and not misleading, and "independent" can only be used if your advice meets the FCA's definition: every piece of content that mentions returns needs to be written with those rules in front of you.
The sample for these three professions is smaller: we measured the keywords and one SERP, not the full profile of the leading domains as we did for accountants.
What to measure, and what can't be measured (68% of Contesini's leads were real)
A professional firm doesn't sell online, so the metric isn't traffic: it's the number of calls, forms and WhatsApp messages that come from Google, and how many become clients. The minimum set-up is Search Console for queries and positions, Google Analytics with events on calls and forms, and the Google profile report.
Does a small firm really need all that?
Yes. On Contesini, two advisory offices in the province of Mantua in Italy, tracking this way showed that 68% of the 299 leads received in 7 months were real opportunities, not time-wasters.
One thing that can't be measured well: how much competitors spend on Google Ads.
DataForSEO detects no paid keywords for either of the two domains in the table, even though "online accountant" is one of the most expensive clicks on the list: the paid database is partial.
Better to look at the SERP during office hours and at the Google Ads Transparency Center.
Recommended reading: which SEO KPIs to watch and how to use Search Console.
SEO or Google Ads for a professional firm? (a paid enquiry costs £190)
With a CPC of £9.48 on "accountant london" and a 5% conversion rate, an enquiry from Google Ads costs around £190. It's a cost that holds up if the client stays for years, and for an accountant that's usually the case.
Ads brings enquiries from the first week and stops when the budget does. SEO takes months and then stays.
The sequence we recommend to a firm starting from zero:
- Google profile and a website with service pages, straight away;
- a local Search campaign for the first 6 to 12 months, while organic grows;
- then cut Ads back to the keywords organic can't reach.
We've written up structure, keywords, budget and policies in Google Ads for professional services, and the general reasoning in SEO and Google Ads together.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on the game you're playing, but for a local firm the work is limited: profile, 5 to 10 service pages, around ten targeted articles and reviews. It's a project of a few months plus maintenance, well below the cost of a national project. The benchmarks are in how much SEO costs.
It depends on the piece: the Google profile moves within weeks if it starts from zero reviews, service pages with the city take 3 to 6 months on searches of a few hundred a month. On Sunscape we went from 1 to 38 keywords on page one in six months, with impressions rising from 329 to 5,809 a month: a realistic order of magnitude for a firm too. The details are in how long SEO results take.
Yes, but small and targeted. London Accountants ranks in the top 7 for its niche topics with a handful of articles; a blog that covers the whole of tax competes with The Accountancy Partnership and HMRC, and loses. Our rules for writing are in creating content for SEO.
Yes, to keep the firm's data consistent, and Google shows them in a block (5 in one carousel on "accountant london"). As a source of clients, only the ones that sell enquiries, such as Bark or Unbiased, have a mechanism for it, and you pay per contact. They replace neither the profile nor the website.
Recommended reading: the local and national markets compared.
Where to start (with reviews, before the website)
Not 8,679 keywords like the national leader, but the 15 that bring 90% of a local firm's traffic.
Not a guide to the Government Gateway at 246,000 searches, but "mandatory payrolling of benefits" at 140.
Not your name (50 searches), but "near me" (12,100).
Not a "services" page, but one page for each service people search for.
Now, two concrete things.
One: search Google for "your profession + your city" during office hours. Look at who's in the local pack and who the top three organic results are.
Two: if the pack has firms with 50 to 100 reviews and you have 4, the first job isn't the website. It's asking every client whose work you complete over the next three months for a review. If the pack is weak and the organic results are directories, there's a service page with the city to write and a free spot to take.
If you'd like us to look at the SERP for your city and your sector with you, book a strategy consultation. If you run a small firm, the general reasoning is in the guide to SEO for SMEs and on our local SEO service page.
See you next time!
