Your company is located in Utah and you provide services of some kind here locally in the Utah area. How do you go about your search engine optimization campaign? Where do you start? Better asked, what do you need to do different when optimizing your site locally compared to an emphasis nationally. The answer is that there is not a big difference. You still do all the same things you would normally do with your SEO campaign. But I did want to highlight a few quick tips to help you gain an advantage over your competition.

10 Quick Utah Specific SEO Tips

1. Address and contact information on homepage - Make your address and contact information for your business available on the homepage of your website. Many times, after crawling this information Google will include you in it’s Google Local directory. This helps Google understand where you are and to what region you are specifically marketing too.
2. Submit to local directories - there are many Utah specific local directories such as connect-utah.com or utahfirms.com etc. These directories are specific to Utah and are very relevant to your company. Submit to the free and paid directories to get the optimal results.
3. Trade Show & Conventions - trade shows and conventions here in Utah are a terrific way to spread the word of your company. Handing out business cards with your URL located on them as you walk around these events and “mingling” with different people can create a huge effect on your company. You will see increased traffic by doing this.
4. Blogging - believe it or not, there is a small but effective community of bloggers here in our state of Utah. Many of them are “nobodies” like me! Many of them are “somebodies” like Paul Allen the founder of Myfamily.com. Using blogging techniques to attract these bloggers attention and making them aware of your superior services can increase traffic and website conversion tremendously.
5. B2B Networking - Corporate Alliance and BNI are two B2B networking groups that have helped my business grow very fast. These networking groups have given me the opportunity to meet many new people and to share information with them about my services. Many times in these B2B groups you are asked to give short presentations about who you are and what you provide.
6. Offer a Free Report -  Free reports are awesome!  I always download them when I get the chance.  More people need to offer this. I am convinced that webmasters get lazy and don’t want to spend the time and energy to put these type of resources together. If you can put together a free report pertaining to what you do, and it’s well written and helpful to the reader then you will gain trusted readers that turn into hot leads for your business.
7. Be Specific in What You Offer - be specific in what you offer to your consumers here in Utah. There are far too many real estate agents who are competing for ‘Utah Real Estate’. What specifcally do you provide? What separates you from your competition? Find a niche and work with it!
8. Be Specific in “Where” You Offer - What I mean by this is similar to what I stated above. There are far too many people that are competing for the term ‘Utah Real Estate’ or ‘Utah Dentist’. Be more specific. How about ‘Dentist in Sandy, Utah’ or ‘Real Estate agent in Spanish Fork’ etc. Doing so will make searching for services much easier for the consumer. And will give you a much more qualified lead.
9. Dmoz.org - get your website listed in the region specific section of the Dmoz web directory. Make sure to get yourself listed under the Utah region.
10. Yahoo Local Directory! - This is a paid directory that is worth the money. Get listed here to really help your Yahoo SERP’s. This is the least important of all the other 9 tips but it is of course still important.
11. Post ads in Craigslist - Post an ad every week or two under your category of services in your local craigslist section. This will help increase traffic of people who interested buyers. Do not spam craiglist with worthless ads. Be relevant and don’t cheat.

These are just a few tips. But these alone can really benefit your business website and increase your Search Engine Ranking Placements (SERP’s). Don’t forget to setup a free analytics program such as Google Analytics to see the results of all your work. You will notice an increase in traffic and conversion.