This is a question that pops up from time to time as I’m regularly asked if I will put some keywords into the copywriting for accountants that I do.
The problem is of course that the answer is that ‘it depends’.
So in this post, I thought I’d explore this in more detail and look at the whole issue of keywords.
Getting accountancy clients isn’t physical sales.
To my mind, the debate has been taken over by physical sales marketing, in other words, the use of keywords and phrases is all about a transactional relationship with the client.
The problem is that this is rarely the way to sell accountancy services as they rely on the build-up of trust between the client and the firm.
So simply packing blog posts with keywords is probably going to do more harm than good, especially in the eyes of Google.
So keywords are no good then?
Nah, that ‘s not what I said.
Keywords are fine for pointing people at the valuable content you have on offer.
They are a way of telling Google what is on your site but I’d argue that once the visitor is on the site it is much more about building a level of trust.
And the truth is that for trust based services like accountancy, people generally don’t buy because they saw you at the top of the search engine results pages.
I’d also say that marketing for clients works much better when it is away from the Google search pages and done on an individual basis.
In short, I think that when you are commissioning copy for an accountancy practice you are better off looking at the meat of the copywriting rather than the fluff of keywords. Treat them as a ‘nice to have’.
Copywriting for accountants – what’s the use?
Well it’s all about credibility.
Look at it this way, imagine you were wanting to find a good practice near you that was up to date and had their finger on the pulse.
You go to a website and find that the last blog post was written in 2014 and was about tax rates.
You’re pretty certain that the tax regime has changed since then (it has) so you are suddenly mistrustful of the site and it puts you off.
So you go and look at another site and you find that they have a wealth of posts about different areas of their practice.
You even find out something that you didn’t know.
So you feel much more confident about the firm, the people and about contacting them for more information.
And this is the crucial difference between selling services and DVDs.
A great set of keywords will sell DVDs directly from the site.
A great set of keywords won’t sell your accounting services, but when people hit your site, poor quality content will certainly lose you the sale.
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