Creating High Quality Copy For Accounting And Cpa Websites

Creating High-Quality Copy for Accounting and CPA Websites

by

Brian OConnell

It’s not as easy as you may presume to create unique content for your accounting Website. Only a small number of accountants compose their own copy. Instead they choose to get website “templates”, ready-made CPA websites with copy already already included.

This isn’t a perfect method. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. If you’re looking to get a website up this is without question the best technique. It will allow you to get the website up quickly, and the sooner you get your site up the sooner it will start bringing in new customers and accumulating domain authority in the search engines.

The downside to this strategy is that you are presenting what the search engines call “duplicate content”. It’s unlikely that you’re the only CPA using that content provider, and all these other CPA Websites have essentially the same content on their websites as you have on yours. These pages will not usually be indexed well in the search engines. Duplicate content pages get indexed, but the page that indexes first gets the lion’s share of the credit. This means all the other sites using the same page will need to change the page to get full credit for it. All these pages count… your site won’t be penalized for using these duplicate content pages, but it’s unlikely they’ll ever score well in the search engines.

If you customize your important pages once the site has been posted you can get around this problem.

Do your “index” page first. The “index” page, also often called the “home” page, tends to get indexed first, and as a rule has the most inherit authority. By rewriting it you are creating “unique content”, and that’s what the search engines are looking for.

Once that’s done selectively rewrite other pages. As a rule the more pages you re-write, the better. You’ll get more pages with better rankings, and your overall site will accumulate authority faster. To avoid getting bogged down in a huge project do your pages one at a time. Do the most important pages first and work down.

There are some important rules of thumb to keep in mind that will maximize your appeal both to search engines and prospects.

Using Meta Tags

Before you begin writing create a keyword rich page title for your page. Make your page title 5-7 words, and make sure you include the city and state you’re marketing to. For example:

Los Angeles, CA Accounting and Business Planning

Put this in the “Page Title” Meta Tag for the page (if you don’t know what a Meta tag is or how to change it your web host may need to help you with this).

Now create a keyword rich, headline-style introduction to the page for the search engines to display when your page comes up. For example:

Your Los Angeles, CA Accounting and Business Planning Solution. Free initial consultation for Business Owners.

Put this in the “Page Description” Meta Tag for the page (again, your web host may need to help you with this).

Some accounting and CPA website design firms don’t help you change the Meta Tags on individual pages. They’ll try to sell you on using a “global setting”. This means all the Meta Tags on every page are identical. This is fine at the start, and a global setting is handy to have, but in the long run it’s disastrous to rely on it. As you customize your site content you MUST change the tags on each page. If your website provider doesn’t allow you to change the Meta data on individual pages it’s time to get a new website.

Now… rewrite your page copy.

Make Your Copy Search Engine Friendly

The search engines want a “concise summary” of the information: Too long and the search engines will penalize you because they’ll think you’re either babbling on or getting too technical; Too short and they’ll assume you’re summary isn’t detailed enough. Make your page 400-600 words.

Use your keywords in your text. Try to use your page title keywords (in the example above that would be”Hoboken “, “NJ”, “Accounting”, and the keyphrase “Business Planning”). Optimally you want a 1% “keyword density”. If your page is 450 words use each keyword 4 or 5 times. Don’t overuse your keywords. This is considered a type of spam and could result in your page being de-indexed.

People Friendly Copy

Don’t write too smart. Making youre visitors feel stupid will just frustrate them or make them angry. Don’t waste their time with the details. Prospects don’t care about the details. All they care about is what the benefit is to them. Concentrate on this. How will your service make the readers life better? Write conversationally. Good copy reads casually. People friendly copy is just that… friendly.

Most custom website designers don’t want you to know this, but you can actually get a full featured website up quickly and inexpensively and still reap the benefits of custom content and meta data.

Brian O’Connell is the President and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country’s most successful website design companies oriented exclusively to

CPA websites

. His firm currently provides websites for more than 4000 CPA, accounting, bookkeeping, and tax preparation firms.

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com