How Often Should My Accounting Firm Be Blogging?
Anna Marie Murphy ??
Fractional CMO for Startups & B2B Small Biz | Founder Branding | Digital Marketing | Science-Backed Ingredients, Functional Foods & Nutraceuticals
A frequent conversation we have with CPA firm marketers revolves around the question, “What is the optimal number of blogs we should be posting to our firm’s website each month?”
As a general rule, the more relevant, optimized content you are putting on your site, the better it will be for your firm’s overall search success, and the quicker your firm will realize results.
In our 2016 CPA Firm Website Audit, we found that 86% of the top 135 CPA firms have a blog, and that 71% of those firms are posting two times per month or more. In addition, as the number of pages on a site increases, the Moz rank – the largest SEO measurement tool – of a site drops (in a good way), meaning that a site meaningfully improves in its overall rank of websites across the entire World Wide Web.
See a depiction of these results below:
Results from the 2016 CPA Firm Website Audit, showing the difference between firms with/without blogs in 2015 and 2016, as well as blog activity over those years. This also shows how an active blog significantly moves you down the average traffic rank. Click here to download this full report.
So, how many blogs do we recommend?
The short answer—we recommend posting at least four blogs a month. However, this isn’t a perfect equation for every firm. Your firm will likely fit into one of the two buckets below:
You’re currently blogging four or more times per month:
If you are already be blogging this consistently, that’s great! If you’re already posting four times per month for the firm as a whole, then the next step we recommend for your firm is to begin creating niche-specific content calendars and publishing multiple times per month for each of the niches for which you would like to drive more quality, online leads.
You’re currently blogging less than four times per month:
If you’re blogging less than four times per month, we recommend that you find ways to either start or supplement your efforts to get you to that minimum best practices amount as soon as possible.
How do you do that?
For starters, you can keep an eye out for content opportunities at your firm. We created this helpful checklist that outlines places where blog content may be hiding in your accounting firm.
In addition, there are third-party resources available that can provide content that you can use in your blogging efforts.
Click here to learn more about CPA ContentPlus – our library blog and premium content.
How Long Will it Take for my Blogging Efforts to Make a Difference for My Firm?
If your firm is posting at least four times per month, we’ve found that it will take approximately nine months for your site to make meaningful jumps in online traffic and search results for relevant search terms.
The most important things are to get started, be consistent with your efforts and to post quality, search-optimized content. If your firm is not currently blogging and wants to get started, even posting one quality blog per month will provide search benefits. However, understand that the rate at which your site will move up in the rankings for relevant search terms will be at a much slower rate than if you were to post additional blogs per month. But, as with many things in life, just getting started is most important; the sooner you get started, the sooner you will be able to analyze and report on your results, fine-tune your efforts and begin to make a difference for your firm.
We would welcome the opportunity to help you with your blogging efforts and determine the right frequency of blogging for your firm. Please contact Anna Marie Murphy at 440-449-6800, or email Anna Marie.
CEO @ Elevate Demand | Building the B2B growth agency I wish I had in house.
8 年Going to completely disagree with the premise of this article. The answer to the question isn't how many because it's rarely the issue with firms. Most firms will prescribe the solution you just gave them in this blog post and see $0 impact to the bottom line. Sure they might see a bump in traffic but who cares about traffic. If the 135 firms you mentioned stop blogging do you think they would see any meaningful impact in revenue? I would bet not. I actually feel if 99% of todays firms stopped blogging they would see 0 impact to the bottom line. The issue is that firms treat content like fishing cast a line, hope you reel in a fish to passively bring in clients just because they blog. Whether it's 1 post a month or 10 posts the month the real answer is you need a plan that shows you're creating content in the areas that people actually need it in the avenues where they will read it.
CEO and Chairman of BeachFleischman, Arizona’s largest locally-owned CPA Firm
8 年Thanks for the post!
CEO and Chairman of BeachFleischman, Arizona’s largest locally-owned CPA Firm
8 年Or to rephrase, "How often should my accounting firm be talking to the prospects/clients/influencers we care about most?"