SEO Guides, Tips & More!

In the realm of SEO and better Google rankings for your website most accounting marketers are aware that quality content is a must have. However, there is a lot of confusion by marketing professionals on what makes content good from a SEO perspective. This is an excellent question because as marketers become more involved in driving content development from firm professionals they need to know the answer to this question. More importantly, good content without a broader SEO strategy will only deliver limited results. It’s like playing in a hockey game with only skate, yes you will be in the game, but at a large disadvantage. Content development is the one area where firms seem to be all over the board with effectiveness and experience limited bottom line impact as a result. To help clients, prospects and others understand what it means to have quality SEO content, we have provided a summary of key considerations to make below.

SEO Your Content Strategy

Most accounting marketers have a content development process that allows partners and others to dictate what they will write about. Why this is practical for many it also ensures a minimal SEO impact. It’s important to conduct keyword planning and research to determine what searches are being conducted and how a firm can use this information to get additional clicks to the site. While it’s not possible to proactively plan each piece of content it’s important to be as proactive as possible. This will ensure the site attracts the most qualified type of leads to the site.

Design Good Content

A good user experience (UX) is good SEO. From the overall structure of your website’s layout to the details within it, when users are engaged, they consume more content, interact with it and share it. The more interaction and traffic on the site the greater the opportunity to attract new opportunities. Qualities of good content is that it is simple, clear, coherent, not overly technical, discusses an in issue or question a prospect might ask, and finally demonstrate how the firm has the solution to the discussed issue/challenge. This type of content allows for issued based optimization which attracts those who are generally farther along in the sales cycle.

Make Sure Your Content is Correct

There is nothing more cringe-worthy than a typo in a fantastic piece of content. This is especially true if a partner or another accounting professional uncovers this issue before you do. (I have been here in my early career and it’s not a pleasant experience). While there is no current evidence – yet – that grammar is a ranking signal, it certainly is a credibility concern. Also, pay attention to citing sources in the content where and when appropriate. In some cases, this is not needed, but in other especially if discussing a new regulation, it’s helpful to the site visitor.

Check Your Keyword Usage

A common question we get from accounting marketers is how many times should our keywords in the content? The answer is that it can be one or two times (or more). It’s not important how often keyword terms appear in a piece of content, but how the keywords are used in the context of on-page SEO. So, avoid the tendency to stuff keywords in the content and other places. Not only is this illogical but Google will not take kindly and ignore the content or worse.

It’s better to invest time to see how the content is performing based on the number of clicks, keyword ranking and how often the keyword term(s) are searched on a monthly or quarterly basis. Keywords are not dead as some have suggested, but how we use them and measure their effectiveness needs to shift slightly.

In Perspective

The reality is content development and planning is new for most accounting marketers. So it’s not a surprise that many are still working on developing a process that allows staff to write about what they want while catering to SEO best practices. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry small steps towards the goal will have a positive impact on efforts. We will soon be releasing a checklist of items to review for each section mentioned above. It’s a handy tool that helps keep efforts on track.