Denver is a competitive city, with an annual metro area population growth of over 44,000 people between 2017– 2018. And with this growth comes new businesses, more prosperity, and thus more people competing to get the attention of the new flock. And where does most of these migrant birds go when they are looking for something? It certainly isn’t the Yellow Pages; it’s search engines, and more specifically Google, who controls the vast share of the market. So how popular is search? Well, 8 out of 10 people, when they are looking for something local, search for it. That means 80% of your market in Denver is actively looking for it on search; which is why, according to HubSpot, SEO is professional marketer’s number 1 priority.

In case you’re not convinced on the value of SEO for a marketing like Denver, here’s a couple other statistics:

According to Neilsen, SEO ranks the highest in the “extremely important” marketing channels among CMO’s.

Source: Neilsen/Marketing Charts

2. A study by Smart Insights revealed that SEO has a 46% higher ROI than social media.

Source: Smart Insights

While you could hire a firm outside of Denver in order to do your SEO, local professionals typically have a better grasp on the behavior of the local markets, by being able to easily identify, and have connections with, local sites to partner with to boost your SEO through guest posting, backlink exchange, and other forms of partnerships that affect organic rank.

According to a colleague of mine over at Gaea Solutions, “SEO, now a days, is about building natural relationships with relevant brands, rather than the blanket link building strategies of the past. From a combination of my experience, and independent researchers, Google isn’t so concerned about the number of links, or really even the strength of the Domain Authority on the site; it’s concerned about relevance, which includes locality, especially when dealing with ranking on Google Maps. And while you could have a foreign firm outside of Denver figure this out, and build a relationship, they will bill you for the time it takes. With a local firm, this time is significantly cut, since they have spent the time developing connections in the area that will help with your search engine rank.”

A great way to cut the costs of SEO is to just do a lot of it yourself. If you have a WordPress based website, this becomes particularly easy, as a most of the onsite modifications are just filling in labeled fields, however, with basic CSS/HTML understanding, you could also easily modify your site, without an intuitive CMS like WordPress.

According to Moz, a leading SEO analysis company, the best local ranking factor in 2018 is what are called Google My Business Signals. These signals include proximity of searcher to your business, correct categories on your Google My Business page (for instance, if you’re a plumber, your category is plumber, rather than general contractor), and the right keywords in your business title. So for instance, assuming you’re a plumber, your website title both on your page, and on your Google My Business page should be “Gary Jones & Associates: Certified Denver Plumbers” instead of just “Gary Jones & Associates”. On your site, this can be changed by changing the title tag. This doesn’t mean you have to change your business name legally, it just means you need to change it digitally.

And that’s it, with these simple changes, you have just boosted your rank and saved yourself some billable hours.

About the Author:

Alex Berryhill is a director over at Gaea Solutions, a boutique media firm that specializes in search and public relations. Gaea Solutions is committed to taking a portion of their revenue and donating it to causes that their client’s support, in order to help the world economically and philanthropically.

Berryhill has been featured in Fast Company, The Next Web, and Discovery’s Treehugger.