Utah is a mountainous state located in the Western United States with a population of 3.206 million. This state is best known for its winter skiing resorts and summer mountain trails. According to the U.S. News & World Report, Utah is considered the third-best state to live in and has the best economy in America. The economy of Utah is bolstered by businesses that call the state their home, of which 99.3 % are small businesses.
According to the latest federal data, there are more than 203,000 small businesses in Utah. If you own a small business in Utah, you have your work cut out for you. However, you can get ahead of your competition by hiring Utah SEO companies to help with your online marketing campaigns.
What is SEO?
If you are still not aware of what it is, SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and combines different techniques needed to make your business website rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs). A high-ranking website will enable you to reach more of your target audience. SEO companies are aware of the different algorithms and ranking factors that search engines use to rank websites. Here are some of the techniques that SEO professionals use.
Keyword Research.
While keywords are no longer a top technique for SEO marketing, strategic placement of keywords and anchor texts in content is necessary to direct searchers to your website. However, Google and other search engines have improved their algorithms to prevent websites from using Black SEO tactics such as stuffing keywords in the content to boost ranking. Instead, SEO experts will ensure that you will have the right number of keywords in your content and strategically use them.
Regularly Updated Content.
Having a business website is not enough to get visitors. You may have an online presence, but if your website is stagnant, then it may be buried amongst thousands if not millions of other similar websites. SEO companies will make sure that your website will not be stagnant by constantly updating its contents.
Having content that offers solutions to your target audience’s problems is key to keep them engaged and stay longer on your site. Likewise, if your website contains different media content, such as product demonstration videos, your chances of having your products purchased will increase by 144 percent.
On-Page Optimization.
Utah SEO companies will also assess the technical aspects of your website and determine if they are optimized to rank high in SERPs. On-page SEO will look at your website’s layout and structure, the speed of loading, and all the HTML elements. The main purpose of On-Page SEO is to make sure that your website will load fast whenever a visitor chooses to view it.
Google and other search engines have announced that loading speed is a major factor for ranking high in their SERPs. SEO experts will ensure that every element of your website is optimized to give it maximum loading speed. SEO professionals will make your loading speed faster by doing the following:
- Optimizing File Sizes.SEO experts will compress file sizes of images and videos to make them load faster when viewed.
- Reducing if not eliminating all webpage redirects.A website redirect occurs when a user visits a certain URL; the URL loads but immediately changes to a different URL. While some redirects are necessary, these redirects may cause a user to wait longer for URLs to load, resulting in higher chances of visitors abandoning your website.
- Applying for an SSL certificate.SSL certificates ensure that data transmissions between websites and browsers are encrypted to protect sensitive user data. Google and other search engines will reward websites with SSL certificates with a boost in ranking. Likewise, users will most likely choose websites that will keep their personal and financial information protected.
- Making Websites Mobile Friendly.There are now more people using their mobile phones to search the web. A 2019 study by Merkleinc showed that 63% of Google searches were made using mobile devices. Utah SEO companies will tweak your website to load properly on different screen sizes.
Local SEO.
One common problem with small business owners is that they think too big at once. While all small business owners strive to enter the national or international market, you need to be realistic on your goals first. It is first important to target the customer base nearest your location then scale your business as you expand.
SEO experts will make sure that your website will develop local searches for relevant keywords to your business. Likewise, SEO companies will use geo-focused keywords and other techniques to make your website rank high in local search results.
These are just four ways of getting more visitors to your website. If you are interested in knowing the other techniques, you can call one of the Utah SEO companies near you.