Search engine optimisation (SEO) is essential in marketing. If you rank higher than competitors in search engines, it’s easier for prospective customers to discover and visit your site first.
SEO is one of the few marketing techniques that offers startups the chance to compete next to enterprises with large budgets. If you know how to write compelling and optimised content, then you won’t need to spend a dime on SEO. But if not, you will need to hire a professional content writing solution. Although it won’t be free, the price of the optimised content will be significantly less than paying for Google ads.
Keep in mind that to run a successful SEO campaign, you have to commit to regularly creating content and analysing your results.
So, What Is SEO?
SEO is about making your site appealing, mainly to Google’s algorithm. The goal is to have your articles on the first pages of search engines. When a web user searches for information relevant to your products or services, your website will appear first as a trustworthy source of information.
To put it differently, the higher your website appears on search engine result pages (SERPs), the more visitors you will get. And once a user visits your website, they enter your sales funnel, meaning the better your chances of them converting into actively paying customers.
Search engines are complex, so don’t expect to understand everything on your first try. Search engines use automated search engine robots known as spiders or crawlers. These collect information on every site on the web, the so-called indexing process. When a person searches a specific term, search engines process all their indexed information and create a result page. As expected, Google and the other search engines put the most relevant sites on the SERPs, which is where you want to be.
How to Optimise Your Content
Here are some of the best tips to follow when optimising your content:
Good SEO Is Great Content
High-end content is at the heart of good SEO, and there’s no way around it. Your site’s content showcases your firm’s specialties (in your case, your accounting and bookkeeping specialist), so when developing your copy, remember to answer queries that drive visitors to your website.
But, what is content, then?
Content is a term that describes text, including blog posts, articles, or even case studies. It can be anything that offers value to visitors and is easily accessible to search engines.
To have a successful content strategy follow the below guidelines:
Develop unique content: The content on your website must be unique. It can exist in other places, but it has to have a unique angle not found elsewhere. So, don’t copy and paste content from other sites, as it can harm your site’s exposure.
Publish articles frequently: Updating your site’s content regularly is a must when it comes to SEO. Why? Because you let Google know your site’s active. Content can get stale, so keep updating your site as regularly as possible.
Craft content relevant to your brand’s products or services: This doesn’t need an actual explanation. If you publish content completely different from your speciality, there’s a high chance you will confuse the search algorithm. Considering you’re an accounting firm, you’d want your blogs to be close to your area of expertise and logical for your audience.
Optimise Your HTML Elements
Your site has many HTML elements that must be optimised. So, they have to contain the right keywords and be formatted correctly.
Here are the main elements that have to deliver a consistent message to search engine algorithms, telling them what your site’s about:
Page content: This is text on each page published on your site and should relate to your brand’s services or products. Avoid using too many keywords, though, as you will be penalised for keyword stuffing. Instead, use as many as needed.
Title tags: These are the names of the pages on your site. These appear as clickable links in search results. The recommended format for title tags is Keyword or Article/Page Title | Company Name. The character limit is 55 characters.
H1, H2, etc., tags: Headings and subheadings are powerful for SEO. They enlarge and bold the text they’re applied to and help separate your content into easily digestible sections. This improves the readability of your content, making it more appealing to search engines.
URL structure: You should build your URLs independently. While on it, add relevant keywords that can tell searching crawlers about the main theme of your content, articles, blog posts, or landing pages.
Meta description: A meta description is a descriptive text that appears under clickable articles in Google search results. Meta descriptions aren’t an SEO factor, but they’re still important. If they’re well-written, they will entice and encourage visitors to click on them and see a preview of your content.
Images: Crawlers don’t see images. But, they do see the information within the code of each image. So, add images with a descriptive file name and proper alt tag texts to your content. This helps search engines understand what’s displayed and whether that is relevant to a web user’s query.
Invest in Local SEO and Social Media
SEO can take place even away from your website. This is called off-site SEO, and it involves your accounting firm having a presence on external websites. Here are some website types every accounting practice must keep investing into:
Review sites: Many websites let customers review businesses. Gathering such reviews is super important for SEO as they send signals to search engines about the trustworthiness and authority of your business. On top of this, reviews influence prospect customers as they move through your sales funnel. Of course, the more positive reviews you have, the better your chances to stand out from competitors.
Google Business Profile: Having a Google My Business profile offers you a powerful presence when people look for local accounting firms. For this reason, do try to have your office address, brand name, and contact information updated and published on Google Maps, Facebook, or other socials.
Why Website Usability is Paramount for SEO
Besides offering valuable and optimised content on your site, you should also help users have a great experience. For example, users will visit other sites if navigating your site is challenging or if your pages are slow to load. Your bounce rate increases while your chances of conversions decrease. Search engines value user experience, so they consider it an important SEO factor. Here are some aspects of site usability you need to take into account:
No 404 errors: This is the missing page error. Nobody likes landing on pages that don’t exist anymore, as it feels like hitting a dead end. It takes away from the experience. You can use a 301 redirect and send your visitors to an updated page when this happens. However, keep in mind to only use 301 redirects if you have a relevant alternative page. Generally, an odd 404 error is OK for Google. In fact, it’s unavoidable. Just remember to explain to users why they can’t find a page with a 404 error code.
Site speed: Search engine crawlers measure the time it takes for pages to load. Make sure your site has clean code and medium-sized images to avoid slow site speed. Your visits will not wait too long for your content to load.
Easy-to-navigate pages: Moving between your site’s pages should be easy. Websites with complicated navigation don’t impress visitors or search engines, for that matter.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve covered lots of information on SEO. We know you might be feeling overwhelmed with all of this.
If you need help in your SEO or content creation, feel free to reach out to Strategically, one of the UK’s most accredited content agencies. We can take care of all of your content needs by developing optimised accounting copy for your website. This way, we can ensure you reach the first pages of the search results, maximising your brand’s exposure.
