We work with a wide range of clients including those within the accounting sector. Often when we meet to discuss initial marketing proposals, a blog is far from the agenda. People are under the misconception that blogging is for… ‘bloggers’. There’s this misconception that a blog is about polished lifestyles and food! In this blog we aim to set the record straight and give small business owners more insight into the purpose behind a blog.
Whilst your content is essential to attract your target audience, blogs are essentially about your blog fitting into your marketing strategy in particular, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Now is a good time to review your business website. If you don’t already have a blog page, then these points will help you to understand the purpose of the page and its importance in helping your website rise in search rankings. If you already have a blog, then there’s some tips for content that could help your overall digital marketing plan.
A blog forms part of your content marketing
A blog is an important page on your website to provide tips, advice, guides, and offers. All your content is aimed at supporting your target audience as well as positioning you as a thought leader in your sector.
But that’s not all. Content that you post on your blog helps to keep your website fresh, frequently. The strategic inclusion of keywords – phrases that you want to be found for in search – will help search engines find you. And, because you are posting content regularly it helps search engines see that you are ab authority in your field.
Red more about optimising your content with keywords in our blog; What SEO agencies should offer London firms.
See, there’s a little more to it than fancy coffee pics!
Content marketing plan
Create a content marketing plan to help you schedule when you will write a blog and on what topic.
To help your creativity, initially think of key dates in the year that you can use as a hook. If you’re an accounting firm, then list out key dates for tax return deadlines within the year; the Budget and so forth. Also include exhibitions you may be attending or charitable events you are involved with so that your audience gets an all-round look at your firm. This will help you schedule timely reminder blogs for your audience.
Use news articles as a hook – often referred to as a news jack. Or if there’s some research just published of relevance to your target audience you could write a comment piece on it and why your prospective customers or existing clients should take note. A word of warning on this though, always make sure to reference any source in full and add backlinks to the original article or report.
Internal and external website links
Backlinks are all about helping your website increase its domain authority and appearance in search. Blogs are a great way to add backlinks to your website. You can add links back to key ‘pillar’ pages within your website as well as adding links to external websites. Not only that, the aim is to have backlinks reciprocated.
The more you write, the more thought leadership authority you accrue with search engines, this will help you be sought for backlinks too. Now this is a long-term SEO strategy as it takes time to build up a catalogue of good quality content and a lot of work to seek out opportunities that you could provide comment on with external sites.
So, your quick wins are that once you’ve checked your own website has relevant links to other pages on your website is to check any websites that you already have a mention on and whether they have a backlink to you. For example, are you a member of an industry association, speaker or exhibitor at an event or formed a partnership with a supplier? Do these sites have the correct website mentions in place and importantly a hyperlink back to your accountancy website?
Google My Business
Always make sure you have completed your Google My Business page. Continue to update it with your latest blogs. This also adds another backlink to your website. Plus, it tells this dominant search engine first-hand all about your business which helps you be found by prospects as well as provide ongoing support to your current client base.
Read more on the benefits of completing your Google My Business page in our blog – have you told search engines you exist?
Titles and keywords
And now for the website backend tech SEO. Make sure you always complete the H1 / H2 header tags as well as meta title and alt tags when you upload your blog.
If you partner with a website designer and developer, then they will be able to guide you on this. If you’ve not updated your website in a long time and have a Content Managed System (CMS) such as WordPress, you should be able to look at the backend and complete these yourself.
Equally if you wanted a Free Website Review, which will highlight areas that can be updated such as missing header tags or meta titles, then get in touch with us and we can run this report for you.
Our blog 9 tips for optimising your website has some further tips on SEO for inbound marketing.
Smart Cow Marketing is a digital marketing agency providing services for a range of clients including marketing for accountants.