How I help accountants

Accountancy is difficult to explain well. The work is technical, the rules keep changing, and there are different audiences you need to speak to – sole traders, business owners, landlords and finance directors to name a few. Retreat into accountancy-speak and you lose both the reader and their business.

I have written for accountancy firms since 2011. I help them explain what they do clearly and accurately, so that clients trust them, search engines find them and, more and more, AI assistants can recommend them.

What makes accountancy content hard to write

Your accountancy firm knows its own work inside out. That is part of the problem. What is second nature to the people who belong to your firm is often invisible to a client who is trying to decide whether to call.

A good page has to bridge that gap. It has to be accurate and clear enough for a business owner who wants a straight answer, and detailed enough for someone making a real decision about tax, audit or business succession. It cannot make the work sound simpler than it is, and it can’t bury what you offer in a pile of unreadable jargon.

What you need to communicate to clients and prospective clients also changes frequently. Budgets, HMRC guidance, Making Tax Digital, changing tax thresholds, accountancy standards, payroll responsibilities –accountancy content can date fast. A page that was right two years ago can be hopelessly out of date without anyone noticing.

Where it usually goes wrong

Most established firms do not have too little content. They have too much of the wrong kind.

Service pages describe the firm in general terms, the “proactive”, “friendly”, “trusted” sort, that tell a reader very little about who the firm actually helps. Tax-update posts pile up until several cover the same change and none is clearly the current one. Old guidance stays live after the rules have moved on. A useful page sits where nothing links to it.

There is a newer version of this problem as well. A firm can rank perfectly well in Google and still not get named when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude or Google’s own AI to recommend an accountant. Usually that is because the site never says plainly who it helps and how, so an assistant has nothing specific to repeat. I have written more about why that happens and what to do about it.

What I can help with

The work I offer depends on what your firm needs, and you can pick from any of it. Some clients come for a single job — a set of service pages, a series of articles, an edit. Others want someone to look at the whole picture before deciding what to commission. Both are fine.

If you want to know what your existing content is doing before you spend more on it, a content audit is a good place to start. I go through the pages and articles — years of tax updates, service pages and guidance that was right at the time — and work out what to keep, improve, merge, remove or create. On larger, multi-office firms I use Manticore, software I built for my own audits, to check every page in scope and keep the evidence behind each decision.

If you already know what you need, I can go straight to it:

• Website copy that explains your firm without drowning the reader: service pages, sector and location pages, and an about page that builds confidence rather than reciting history.

• Regular articles that keep up with Budgets, HMRC guidance and the questions clients are actually asking, written to support the services the firm wants to grow.

The rest of what I offer — campaign and print copy, English editing — is on my services page.

I can work directly with the firm, or alongside your marketing team, SEO agency or web developer.

THP Chartered Accountants: fifteen years and counting

I have written for THP Chartered Accountants since 2011, when a long-copy flyer I left in an office foyer led to their website rewrite.

Since then the work has covered the main site, staff biographies, branch landing pages for London, Essex and Surrey, service factsheets, client newsletters and event copy, including their 40th and 50th anniversaries at the Wallace Collection and the Houses of Parliament. From 2016 I have written regular articles under many names, keeping pace with tax changes and structuring the site around keyword research, pillar pages and supporting content.

THP is well established, with four offices across the South East and more than fifty years behind it. The content has to work for owner-managed businesses and larger companies at the same time, which is the balance accountancy writing usually has to strike.

“He understands how to choose the right keywords to get into top search positions and lately into AI overviews. I do not have to edit much or any of Ben’s content, as the quality of his research and writing is so good, and given that I am a perfectionist myself that’s quite an endorsement.”

Jon Pryse-Jones, Business Development, THP Chartered Accountants

A few things accountancy firms ask

Do you actually understand tax and accountancy?

I have written about audit, tax planning, Making Tax Digital, HMRC guidance and Budgets for well over a decade, so I can ask the right questions and get the detail right — and I check what I’m unsure of rather than guess.

Can you keep our content up to date as the rules change?

Yes. Tax content ages fast — a Budget or a threshold change can date a page overnight. Keeping the site current as HMRC and the law move is part of the ongoing work, so readers aren’t landing on last year’s rules.

Can you work with our marketing team or SEO agency?

Yes. I often write to an existing brief or plan, and I can provide content decisions and copy that your own team, agency or developer can use.

Talk to me about your content

If your accountancy website needs to explain your work more clearly, or you’re wondering why AI keeps naming other firms, tell me what you want it to do. A few rough notes are enough to start.