Blogging Ideas for Accountants
Blogging is a great marketing tool that can contribute significantly to your overall SEO strategy. Statistics show that blogging leads to 55% more website visitors, with companies that blog producing an average of 67% more monthly leads than companies that don’t. 10% of marketers also say it generates the biggest return on investment. So what are you waiting for?
A blog that ranks organically can also increase visibility, boost brand awareness and fend off competitors. But how can you write articles that get picked up by search engines, and what topics should you be covering as an SEO-savvy accountancy firm?
Here are 8 blogging ideas for bookkeeping and accountancy businesses to fuel your strategy.
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Write to your peers
When it comes to social interactions among humans, people often hang out with those who share their interests and passions. Why? Because they’ve something to talk about and relate to. Communication is stimulating, and ideas can be bounced around and expanded.
The same applies to digital interactions. Often, those browsing the web are looking to explore topics they already know something about. So, budding accountants or bookkeepers might be searching for bookkeeping and accountancy content to expand their knowledge. The same applies for students in this realm, accounting firm owners, tax pros, people dreaming of starting their own business – and more. Therefore, one of the best things you can do as a blogger is to write to your peers. This can be anything from documenting your journey into accountancy to sharing useful tips and tricks you’ve learnt along the way.
In general, it’s often easier to rank for smaller, unique niches of readers with common interests than it is for broader accounting topics. You can also target some more long-tail keywords which have much lower search volumes but higher conversion rates.
Top Tip: Grow your peer-to-peer blog by developing content ideas known as clusters. To do this, start by having a specific audience in mind and think about the questions they may ask such as: what accountancy services do I need for my new business? This can be a standalone blog. But you can also expand it to cover each of the services you offer, such as payroll for start-ups, bookkeeping for start-ups, company structure for start-ups and so on. Take a subsection and break this down further to keep growing your ideas. For example, bookkeeping software start-ups must know and so on.
Content clusters help with internal linking. The more blogs that are related, the more you’ll be able to link back to internal content you’ve already produced, helping pages to index.
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Blog for start-ups in a niche
Writing for a specific niche will give your content a much higher chance of ranking. This is because you’re not competing against well-established, high ranking blogs who are already covering common keyword terms. You can choose a specific industry, location – or both. For example, you might create a blog with the title: How to Start a Bookkeeping Business in Kent. Or, 5 Tips for Accountants in Kent. Do some keyword research to source location-based keywords that you can use in your blog title. This will help your blog to rank organically for local searches. For example, if people are searching for ‘accountants in Kent,’ they might find your blog and then click through to your website.
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Address consumer pain points
Make your blog a go-to source of information for your target audience by addressing consumer pain points. In order to plan and schedule content, research is required. Look to see what people are typing into Google to find your business online. This will give you some insight into what questions need answering. Examples of common searches might include: How to Set-Up Payroll for my Accountancy Firm. Or What Bookkeeping Software Do I Need? Look at the FAQ pages of competitors for inspiration too, and then turn these ideas into full blogs.
The more helpful your blog is to your target audience, the more they’ll return time and time again and hopefully be driven down the sales funnel. They’re also more likely to stay on your blog for longer, absorbing all content. This improves the ‘dwell time’ which is a Google Ranking Factor. The longer the dwell time, the more important your page is deemed to be.
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Cater to important industry dates
As well as addressing consumer pain points, think carefully about the type of content people might be looking for at specific times of the year. For example, you can prepare content around tax return deadlines for October and January to ensure people act on time. Posting a generic ‘essential dates for accountants’ blog linking back to more specific titles is also a good idea, again setting you apart as a knowledgeable brand and improving internal linking. This kind of content also provides multiple keyword opportunities.
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Create software lists
Since Making Tax Digital was introduced, more and more companies are looking for the best software for their accountancy tasks. So, put your brand in the spotlight again by creating helpful software lists. Lists are quick and easy to read and encourage backlinks back to your blog. How? Well, if someone has written a more generalised accountancy article but touches on accountancy software, they may be looking for a decent blog they can link to that details all the information the reader needs. Backlinks from reputable sites can boost your SEO rankings.
What’s also great about bulleted lists is that Google might even pick these up and show them as Featured Snippets. This is Position 0 in SEO terms and will boost visibility and click-through rates.
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Write reviews of software and products for accountants
As well as creating basic lists, you should also think about writing detailed reviews of accountancy software or products. Accountants, bookkeepers and tax professionals are likely to ask questions such as: What’s the Best Tax Software for Accounting Firms. So, be one step ahead of the game by prepping a series of reviews. Be sure to keep up with the latest technological advances and choose software you’re familiar with. If you can show how the software has helped you as a company, then you’ll come across as trendsetting and well-organised.
Top Tip: Keep abreast of tax changes or changes that might impact company processes as this could affect the software you review. For example, Making Tax Digital required the use of very specific software packages approved by HMRC. Essentially, blogging is all about providing the most useful and helpful information possible.
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Publish content round-ups
Aggregated content is not overly biased or self-promotional. It’s simply a round-up of facts from across the web and is used to inform and enlighten people about a specific topic or industry. This can be done weekly or monthly depending on the volume of news there is to report. But it’s a good idea to pick a day and a time to launch this information so that people look out for it. For example, you could publish: September Roundup of Bookkeeping Tips, followed by a blog for October, November, December and so on.
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Offer tips, advice and lessons for accountancy students
Students are always on the look-out for helpful, well-summarised content. So try to make difficult content easier to understand and target key phrases they might be typing into Google for ranking purposes. Being a student is all about passing exams and getting good grades, so you might want to think about titles such as: Four Tips for Passing the AAT/ACA/ACCA/CIMA or CIPFA, depending on what research tells you is the most searched for on Google.
SEO for Accountants
Contact our accountancy marketing experts at Whitefish Marketing today for help with digital content and local SEO strategy tailored to your accountancy business needs.
