Following on from my recent blog post about the 3 core elements of SEO, there are so many misconceptions about how SEO works and how your content plays a huge part in your website rankings.
“How do I know what to rank for?”
“Do I need to pay for Google ads?”
“How does my audience know I exist?”
The last one is key. There’s a tendency for accountants to think that people are searching for you specifically, or your area. You might think your audience is searching for phrases such as “accountants in Manchester” or “business start up advisor in London”, and if you don’t appear on those pages, how do people know you exist?
What research shows and what we keep noticing with the accounting industry is that the way your audience does business has changed, and so what they are searching for has also changed.
Now that’s not to say you won’t get results from searches like that, but the high value results come from your content.
Your audience isn’t looking for you, they’re looking for answers
Your potential clients need solutions to their problems.
They’re looking for the content that addresses their needs, because they’re looking to be educated before they do business with you.
They want to know how you can solve their problems and how investing their money in your services will help their business.
They want to, in fact they have to trust you before they even consider doing business with you.
Content builds that trust
Use your content to increase your audience’s trust in you, and increase traffic to your website.
But how do you build that trust?
You shape your content by taking the knowledge you’ve gathered over the years of working with clients and share it with your audience. This is really valuable information that helps them from the very start. And it comes naturally to you.
And this isn’t just for your prospects. You can provide value to your clients with your content marketing.
Content is key for your website rankings
If your audience is searching for answers, then the more often those answers appear, the better Google will rank your site.
As you can see from Crunch Accounting, they’ve taken a topic that their audience is asking about regularly and turned it into a guide for their prospects to download. And it’s clear that Google likes this, as they’re ranking highly for the keywords that their audience are using.
This is because Google takes preference over the sites that are publishing regular, valuable content. Chances are you won’t be ranking as high with Google if you’re only posting once in awhile, instead of weekly. This has been proven with two correlations:
The more content, the higher you rank
The more content you are uploading, the more Google will see your site as one that is putting out fresh content on a regular basis.
This doesn’t mean you should upload a blog post every day about anything and everything! Be consistent with your schedule and your quality. And the more specific you are to your audience, the easier it will be for you to rank on Google.
One tool that can help you to find content is Google predictive text:
People often neglect Google’s predictive text; in fact most people use it to find amusing questions people have typed. But you can turn this into a tool to help you.
As you can see, the more words you type into Google, the more it’ll predict the question you’re asking. Because of that, you can this as a base for questions your target audience might be asking, and use that as a basis for shaping your content.
The more websites talking about your content, the higher you rank
It’s a lesser known fact that Google looks at citations and links that point to your content.
Citations mean other websites that are showcasing your content, or sharing it across social media. The more websites and platforms you have talking about your content, the more Google sees your website as a hub for valuable content and a website that is worth checking out.
Therefore, having other people talking about your content is key to your website ranking. It helps you start to rank higher, as other people will be sharing your content and therefore more people will know about it.
Provide the answers to provide value
So to recap, your audience isn’t looking for you.
They’re not looking for an accountant in your area.
They’re looking for answers to their questions, solutions to their problems, advice on the issues they’re facing.
If you focus your content around these areas, you traffic will be much more refined and your audience will become much more educated and begin to trust you. This increases the chance of them doing business with you in the long run.
Your next step should be to see if your content is addressing your audience. That’s why we’ve created the Content Marketer Accelerator training programme, which will help you identify what content to share, and how to share it. Early bird tickets are selling out!
And above anything else, the key is consistency. Sharing regular, valuable content and being ready to respond when the leads come to your door is essential.