Don't make these accounting blog mistakes.

Here at Markology, we continuously harp on about the importance of content marketing for accountants and bookkeepers. It's almost a necessity when it comes to growing your small business online.

But in the race to get out as much content as possible, we've watched CPAs make several critical mistakes when it comes to their blogging efforts.

Today, we're going over the four most common mistakes we see accounting firms make when it comes to writing blogs online.

Let's dive in.

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1. Not writing for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This makes the top of the list for the fact that it’s so important and yet we see this mistake so often.

Your blog posts should be written for Google rankings!

If you are an accounting firm owner who writes blogs about trending topics, changes in legislation, company updates, etc. without any regard for SEO keywords and Google rankings, you're doing it wrong.

In fact, you're probably wasting your time.

Without incorporating accounting SEO keywords into your blog posts, there is a good chance nobody outside of your mailing list is ever going to see them.

When was the last time you went to a company's website just to search through their blog posts and read the updates they've posted?

Never. The answer is never.

Action: Use accounting blogs as a tool to attract new leads to your accounting firm, not just to update current clients.

When writing your blog posts, make sure you have done the keyword research before you start writing. This way, you know you're writing about a topic that:

• People are actively searching and
• that you have a good chance of ranking for on Google

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Here's what we do at Markology:

• Make a list of blog topics you think your customers would find interesting
• Do keyword research to find what people are searching for in your industry
• Use Answer the Public to make sure your keyword fits naturally into a topic
• Match these two lists up based on search volume and difficulty to rank ( you want to look for the keywords that have high search volume and low search difficulty)
• Start writing the topics that match all criteria! 

And trust us, this works.

One of our clients, TL;DR: Accounting increased traffic to their website by 700% by incorporating SEO into their blog posts alone.

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That's without any other SEO or marketing tactics involved!

Like most accounting firms, they were doing a great job of consistently writing blog posts, but alas, nobody ever saw them. By incorporating SEO into the topics they were writing, more and more people searching for these same topics came to their website.

The result? Their leads shot up from 7 appointments booked to 49 / month in less than 6 months.

Don't say we didn't tell you - writing blogs for SEO will dramatically increase your accounting firm growth.

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2. Not being consistent

Consistency is good for your clients, good for Google, and as a result, good for you. ‍

Here's why:

Good for your clients

As a small business owner, you probably know this. Blogging is a fantastic way to engage your client base and remind them that you exist, and do great work. Keep your business fresh in their minds by regularly creating content that helps them and provides valuable information.

People appreciate free, valuable information. The more you provide, the more they will appreciate you.

Good for Google

Google’s algorithm rewards you for "fresh" content. By blogging regularly, you are showing Google that your small business is very much alive, kicking, and relevant to Google’s users.

As marketers, you know this is reason enough for us.

Ideally, Google wants you to create fresh content 1-2x per week. Although fresh content does not necessarily have to be a brand new blog post, we recommend aiming to create at least 1 new blog post a week.

At Markology, we aim for 1 new blog a week ourselves, and recommend this for most small business clients.

If that sounds too aggressive, start with what you can manage. 1-2 blogs a month will still give you better results than doing nothing at all.

If you need a helping hand, reach out to your marketing company or hire a freelance writer on Fiverr or Verblio.

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3.   Not answering client questions

When it comes to figuring out what topics to write, put your customers (and SEO) first.

What do your customers want to know? What questions have they asked before?

We recommend keeping a running list of the questions you get from your customers in Google Sheets, or your tool of choice, and use this as a guide for developing your content strategy.

Here are a few to start:

●      “How much do your services cost?”

●      “What can I expect when hiring X?”

●      “How do I become an S-Corporation?”

●     “What is a Profit and Loss Statement?”

‍Requested content is gold dust for your business. When we’re producing content, we always ask “is this valuable to my clients? Will it help them?”

When someone takes the initiative to reach out and ask a question, they’ve essentially handed you a blog topic on a silver platter.

We wrote a great guide on creating a content strategy for accountants that you can check out here.

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4.   Not incorporating video

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‍Ten years ago, video marketing was an expensive luxury reserved only for big businesses with a budget.

Now, in 2024, producing videos is easier and more affordable, and accessible than ever.

Get that red dot blinking.

Actually, even that’s an outdated concept since almost all smartphones have high-resolution cameras that produce quality videos.

There are two main reasons to go to the small effort of incorporating video into your blogs:

1. Google rewards pages with rich media (think videos, infographics, calculators, etc.)

2. It helps increase traffic and engagement. According to a recent study by Wyzowl, 86% of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website and 83% of video marketers say video has helped increase the average time their visitors spend on the page.

It takes 20 minutes to record a quick YouTube video that you can embed into your blog and share on social media. If you need to make some tweaks, you can hire an editor on Fiverr for less than $30 or ask your marketing agency if they can handle this for you.

So there you go, 4 common mistakes we see accountants and small business owners make and how to address them. We hope you'll begin to incorporate these actions into your accounting firm blogging.

There's a reason why content marketing is included in every Markology plan. And getting it right is just as important as making the effort.

If you have any questions about blogging that we didn't answer, you can email me directly any time.

Until next time!