Driving traffic to your accountancy website
There’s no denying that SEO can seem a little daunting when you first get going. With so many ways to drive traffic to your accountancy website, how do you know which ones to choose? Here at Whitefish Marketing, we’re experts in SEO for accountants, and have tried and tested lots of methods for increasing traffic. Here are some of the approaches that we find most successful.
- Targeting relevant topics
In order to keep a consistent flow of traffic coming to your website, it’s important to know what kind of content people are searching for. What are the key questions regarding accounting and finance that are being asked throughout the year? To find out, some keyword research is necessary. There are plenty of free tools online to help you do this, and the best approach is to look specifically for questions people are asking. These might be, “How do I fill in a Self Assessment tax return?” or “What structure should my business be?”
By discovering the pain points of users and creating content that helps to solve their problems, you can help to ensure your site is listed among the search results when people type these questions into the search engines.
Typically, each query comes with an estimated monthly search volume, which will help you to see which questions are asked most frequently and could, therefore, drive the most traffic to your site. This will help you narrow down the topics to cover.
- Create guest content
A great way to gain exposure is to create guest posts for other blogs in return for a link back to your site. This is a proven method of driving traffic and is used by even the most high-profile sites. You’ll need to create content that is relevant to the audience of the other blog, so think carefully about how you will tailor it and which of your own services is the most appropriate to link back to. You might, for example, write something for a local Chamber of Commerce about how small businesses can reduce their Corporation Tax bill, or provide a piece on probate for a local funeral director’s website.
Considerations include ensuring the guest site is relevant and reputable, and that the content you provide is of a high quality, with only one or two links back to your own website.
- Update existing content
In the world of tax and finance, the goal posts are always changing. IHT thresholds, NI payments, Making Tax Digital – there’s a lot to keep on top of. So if you haven’t updated a post on, say VAT returns, for a couple of years, you’ll likely need to go back and do so. Ensuring your content is still relevant is key to establishing your firm as an authority in its field, and encourages return traffic since users can feel confident that your content is trustworthy. Any information on key service pages should be reviewed at least every six months, while blog content should be reviewed every 12-18 months. You can always add a line to your blog posts to let users know when it was last updated, so they can be sure the content is still relevant to present circumstances.
- Add FAQs
FAQs are a quick win when it comes to content creation, as they can answer lots of questions at the bottom of a post or service page. Most people have a lot of questions when it comes to accounting matters, so a great way to be useful to them – and boost your visibility for longtail keywords – is to concisely answer a few of the most common queries. You might add some of the following FAQs to a post on cash flow forecasting, for example:
- What is a cash flow forecast?
- How do you calculate a cash flow forecast?
- Why do I need a cash flow forecast?
- Post regularly on LinkedIn
Accountants often miss a great opportunity to drive traffic to their websites by ignoring social media. While it’s true that Instagram and TikTok aren’t really the best places to put content about accounting, LinkedIn is a really good place to engage businesses who are looking for useful tips and trustworthy articles. Any time you create a blog post that’s aimed at businesses, ensure you pop a link on LinkedIn, with a line or two above to hook in readers. The use of statistics or questions can help with this. For example:
- X% of businesses admit they aren’t MTD-ready. Here’s how you can avoid being one of them.
- Is your accounting stuck in the Dark Ages? Discover why your business needs to embrace cloud accounting.
- X% of businesses now outsource accounting tasks – and are more productive than ever.
- Carry out your own research
Your clients can be a fantastic source of content if you’re willing to ask them questions once in a while. If you’re looking for a particular angle – let’s take the example of showing the benefits of outsourcing accounting tasks from above – and want some data to back it up, why not send a survey to the clients who use your services regularly in this way? Think carefully about the information you want to collect so you can frame your questions appropriately.
Alternatively, you can work with a provider to reach a greater number of businesses. Bear in mind that not every recipient will respond, so to create a meaningful study you’ll need to contact several times the number of respondents you hope to get.
How our accountancy marketing experts at Whitefish can help
Creating content is often trickier than it first seems and can be a time-consuming process. At Whitefish Marketing, we’re specialists in digital marketing for accountants, and can help your firm to drive more traffic to its website with relevant and engaging content. Get in touch with our team to discuss your requirements and learn more about our services.
