Are you an accountant looking to optimise your SEO? If so, then one great way to do this is to target your content towards your audience’s questions.
There are many good reasons to do so. For instance:
- Questions naturally fire a reflex in the human brain. Using them on your web content is, therefore, a great way to engage people with your content and improve an accountants SEO.
- Answering your audience’s questions increases your chances of getting into Google’s featured snippets, therefore improving your organic search visibility.
- Researching your users’ questions can be one of the best sources of inspiration for your content.
- Answering users’ questions can establish your accountancy firm as a thought leader in your industry, enabling you to provide value and help your audience. This, in turn, increases prospects’ trust in your brand.
Types of Questions in Accountant SEO
It can be helpful to gather your audience’s questions into various groups, in order to refine your SEO strategy. Here are some examples we use with our accountant clients to get them started:
- Basic queries. These questions usually have to do with defining an idea or bit of jargon within the accounting world. For instance, “what is a P45?” might be a basic question which a user might type into Google search. These people usually want simple, quick answers.
- How-to queries. Here, your audience is typically looking for instructions on something. For instance, perhaps they are looking for a step-by-step guide on how to fill out a tax return. These types of questions are great for targeting with video content.
- Brand-related questions. These search queries target a specific competitor of yours or company within your industry (e.g. “Is PWC a public accounting firm?”).
Brand-related questions actually encompass a range of sub-categories, including:
- Questions with high-intent. Here, for instance, the user might be asking specifically how to buy from your brand. These questions are crucial for accountants to target with their SEO, due to their high conversion rate potential.
- Navigation questions. These questions and usually support-related queries concerning your accountant website. For instance, “How do I login into…?” or “How do I access…?”
- Reputation queries. Here, your audience is asking specific questions about your company culture, composition, history etc. For instance, “Is X accountancy an inclusive employer?”
- Competitor questions. These questions compare your accounting brand to another one. For example, “Does X company charge more than Y company for Z?”
How to Find Questions for Your Accountant SEO
So, we’ve covered the reasons to target questions with your accountant SEO and some possible types of questions your audience might ask. From here, how do you actually find out what they’re asking?
Luckily, there are some very useful (and free) resources you can use:
#1 Google Suggest
You have probably seen this before. When you start to enter a query into the Google search bar, you will see Google auto-complete your query as you type it.
Google does this based on what lots of other people have searched for in the recent past. So, if you enter some possible search queries that your audience might make, this can give you a good idea of where the demand and search volume is in your industry.
#2 People Also Ask
This is a newer feature in Google search. “People Also Ask” usually consists of an accordion-structure in your search results, showing similar and related questions which other people have asked Google.
This is great for accountant SEO because it shows you what your target audience wants to know. For example, if we type “how much does an accountant cost” into Google then People Also Ask shows a number of other related queries which you could target for your content:
“How much do accountants charge per hour?”
“How much do accountants charge to do taxes?”
And more.
Adding Question to an Accountant’s Content Marketing Strategy
Once you have an idea of the types of questions your audience is asking, it’s time to incorporate this into your content strategy. But how?
This is actually quite an immense task, and many accountants find it easier and more cost-effective to work with an experienced digital agency to assist them here.
However, regardless of how you intend to approach your content marketing, it helps to know that you should plan different actions and SEO considerations for different user questions.
For instance, if you are looking to target some “Basic” questions with your content then you might want to produce a glossary page on your accountant website. The main call to action here might be to invite your readers to download the content on this page as a PDF, or to share it on their social media.
Another example: How-to questions. Here, you might decide to include an FAQ section on your accountant website. On this page, you might want certain questions to have a more direct call to action. For instance, you answer to the question “How do I start working with an accountant?” might include a call to action to your contact form.
Summary
To conclude this article, here are some key takeaways:
- Questions are powerful means to boost audience engagement with your brand and provide other benefits such as user research.
- From an SEO perspective, answering questions can give you more organic search visibility by appearing in Featured Snippets and “People Also Ask” boxes.
- There are different types of questions when it comes to digital marketing, including “branded questions” and “how to questions”.
- Many free, easy-to-use tools exist to quickly find out what your audience is asking.
- Plan different types of content and calls to action for different types of questions.
