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“Increase our firm’s visibility through SEO.”
56.4% of respondents in the 2024 State of Online Marketing in the Accounting Industry Report listed this as a goal for their firm’s website.
Blog posts, of course, are a big piece of any good SEO strategy.
But who has an extra 5 hours in the week to research and write blog posts on timely tax topics? (My educated guess? Not you.)
Enter stage left: purchased content from marketing platforms.
We understand why purchased content is popular. It’s generally well-written. It’s factually correct. The articles incorporate keywords. It’s one less thing on your to-do list.
The problem with purchased content?
A dozen other firms use this same blog post on their website — word for word.
When it comes to duplicate content like this, the Google algorithm has to use other factors — like your website domain’s overall health — to know where to rank that blog post in search results. This makes it extra difficult for the post to rank well. And, ultimately, it reduces the chance of users clicking on your blog post through Google.
Test your content:
Do you use purchased content? Google search the title of one of your duplicate posts to gauge how many other websites also feature that same post.
“But what about users who come to our site and want to check out our blog? Doesn’t purchased content help those users?”
In theory, yes. However, based on our review of user behavior, rarely do we see a user land on a page (like, say, the homepage of an accounting firm), then navigate to the blog.
Generally, your users navigate to other firm-centric pages on the website. We see the majority of blog traffic come directly from Google, not from other website pages.
Test user behavior on your website:
Take a look at your website’s click maps. Are users who land on your homepage (or other pages) navigating to your blog from the navigation menu?
We don’t think so.
However, purchased content can still be useful:
Just don’t expect purchased content to significantly increase your organic search traffic.
👉 Need help writing original, Google-optimized blog posts for your firm? Grow your organic traffic with our ghostwriting services for accounting firms.
Ally Willis is partner and Head of Strategy at Starling
With a background in conversion copywriting since 2017, she helps clients ask questions, analyze research, test theories, and dig through the results to create custom website optimization strategies.