Colorado has quickly become one of the fastest-growing states in the US. Based on the last official census, Colorado’s population grew by 1.4 percent between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018. Its current population is estimated to be 5,695,564, nearly 700,000 higher than in 2010, representing a 13.2 percent growth. This makes it the fourth-highest among all states over that time period.
With a wide and diverse cultural city that promotes a healthy work-life balance with plenty of different entertainment options, accessibility to the outdoors, and a well-educated, young workforce, Colorado and especially Denver, have become one of the best and most attractive places to live and start a new business.
Denver offers a wide range of opportunities that are not found in all states. The city is rich in culture, with a growing food scene and constant traffic of tourists that keep it fresh and dynamic. Denver provides entrepreneurs and startups, business support and opportunities that are boosted by its traditional customer service culture.
According to Forbes, Denver is ranked as the best place for businesses and careers in the US, becoming a prominent player in the US entrepreneurial scene. Nevertheless, such attractive numbers come with a cost and it is the fierce competition. With more and more new businesses trying to succeed, standing out from the rest becomes quite a task, but it isn’t impossible.
If you are going to start a new project, business, service, product or brand, in a city that shines because of its friendly approach to creativity, art and easy access to technology and customer service, the best thing you can do is using these to your advantage. The best tool, strategy or secret weapon that new business, startup or entrepreneur has to start competing in Denver’s fast-growing markets is SEO.
SEO or search engine optimization will not only help you to position your new brand, service or product, while reaching your specific target audience, but it will also provide you with enough information to understand your potential customers habits, preferences, and needs, giving you the leverage required to succeed over the rest of Colorado local businesses.
Creating Your Business in Denver
Before diving deep into the SEO world it is important to analyze Denver business statistics. Colorado and specifically Denver offer a wide range of benefits and opportunities that will help to establish your business. Having a better picture of how its economics are moving today will allow you to have a better idea of what you are going to find in your specific discipline or market area, how your competition flows and what opportunities are at your disposal.
Why Establish Your Business in Denver
Denver simply keeps showing a fast development in basically all-important areas in which a large and successful city should focus and invest in. Providing for your residents, public parks and open spaces are vital for a healthy lifestyle. Downtown Denver has over 150 acres of parks and open space, including Commons Park and Civic Center Park. You can also enjoy over 110 pieces of public art concentrated downtown.
A city without mobility and public transportation access can’t succeed, but Denver’s robust mobility network boosts and strengthens economic development opportunities, connecting downtown users to surrounding neighborhoods. However, it is interesting how a growing part of the population is biking, walking or using some other sort of alternative means of transportation.
These essential factors allow Denver and the entire Colorado State, to offer a wide range of academic, commercial, industrial, economical and most of all, natural benefits that make it the perfect place to start a new project, brand or business. According to The Downtown Denver Partnership’s 2019 State of Downtown Report, there is an overall city improvement, increasing investment, strong office market fundamentals, a growing and highly-educated workforce, and a vibrant residential population.
In detail the report shows how these specific factors have been behaving lately, providing an interesting blueprint of how it can help or affect entrepreneurs and startup success.
Denver’s Development
Denver’s strong population and job growth keep increasing. Colorado has the 8th lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 3.6%, and by September 2016, the employment growth in Colorado ranked 8th nationally. This has a direct impact on the city’s increasing residential, office and hotel demand, which is expected to represent in 2019, about $3 billion in investment. Forty-eight new projects were recently completed, planned, or are underway, bringing to Downtown Denver a total of 40 hotels, 10,700 hotel rooms, 13,285 residential units, and nearly 40 million square feet of office space.
Denver’s downtown growing residential population also has a direct impact on retail sales. It is stated that retail sales have an annual growth of 6 percent. Restaurants also play a huge roll in Denver’s economics, representing 41% of total sales. On the other hand, tourism and attractions are the main components of Denver’s economics. Downtown Denver welcomes about 17.4 million overnight visitors who spent $5.6 billion. Hotel rooms and meeting places represents $750 million in the economic impact of this world-class destination.
Another interesting statistic to pay attention to is Denver’s high-tech market. Since 2010 the tech workforce has doubled, growing nearly 14 percent per year. This shows a clear trend to Denver’s economic diversification. In fact, the city’s startup scene seems that it is going to be dominated by high tech firms. There are about 12k high tech workers in Downtown Denver and it keeps growing.
Becoming a Startup or Entrepreneur in Denver
Denver has focused on strengthening Colorado’s startup scene. Besides hosting the largest startup event in the US, Colorado is predominantly made up of small businesses and it is especially welcoming high tech industry ventures. According to Colorado’s Small Business Development Center, at least 97.6% of businesses in Colorado are small businesses, employing about 1 million people.
According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, also known as the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship, which is an indicator of new business creation in the United States, shows that Colorado’s startup growth is at a rate of 74.1%, ranking the 5th best state for startup activity. Experts explain this as a consequence of Denver’s highly educated workforce. At least 72% of adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher. In addition, the city’s officials quite rightly push startup growth, making it a little bit easier to launch a new project in Colorado in comparison to other States.
Colorado creates more small businesses than most States. Nevertheless, they seem to be smaller than the average nationally small businesses. If fact, a larger percentage of them seem to fail than in the U.S. as a whole. So this is an interesting and essential element to keep in mind.
It is stated that at least half the startups in the U.S. fail. However, Colorado businesses fail more frequently. This can be explained as we mentioned at the beginning of our post, because of the fierce competition. Good developing conditions will bring a larger number of startups and small businesses that dream of succeeding, and when applying effective SEO will make the difference.
Using SEO to Succeed in Denver
You might think that I am jumping right into conclusions assuming that you or your business is interested in having an online presence, but of course, I am! If you think that online presence isn’t required for your business to succeed, you will prove yourself wrong the hard way. It is virtually impossible to achieve success in a timely fashion, without having a presence on the Internet.
The marketing and branding power provided for having an online presence is incomparable. According to Google, at least 34% of users who conducted a local search on their computer visited a store within a day, and at least 50% of the consumers did it after searching on their smartphones.
However, it is vital to understand that online presence isn’t even enough. You need to hit the first spots in the SERP or search engine results page and that is precisely what SEO does. Most search engine users will click on the top five sites suggested by the engine, and nearly 33% of the users click on the first ranking page.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and as its name suggests, it allows search engines to look and find faster your Website, at the same time it decides that it is more valuable or related to the answer of the search engine user’s queries. Therefore, not only having an online presence but also hitting the top positions in the search engine result page, is a rule of thumb for any business or site that wishes to succeed.
Breaking Down SEO
Search Engine Optimization is understood as a set of rules, tasks, steps, strategies, and tools converging all together to boost the possibilities of hitting a first place or top position in the SERP. In simple words, it is the process that allows websites to become visible to Internet users. The higher ranked your webpage is on the search results page, the more visitors and eventually potential customers it will receive. But it doesn’t end there. SEO provides a lot more vital and juicy information.
When applied correctly, SEO offers a wide range of diverse data that can be translated to significant ROI or return on investment. You can have access to different metrics and stats that provides a clear map to set up the best strategy and approach to your users and potential customers. You can understand and identify those users or potential customers that are more prone to convert into a sale. Knowing exactly where to find and how to reach your target audience will give you leverage over your competitors.
SEO can also help to make your webpage more user-friendly, faster and easier to navigate while increasing its quality. You can control and also increase your webpage traffic, engage with your visitors and strengthen up your relationship with them. SEO can also be used as a powerful tool to promote and strengthen your brand awareness. However, search engine algorithms, rules, and ranking methods are not only complicated and sometimes even unclear, but they also tend to constantly change. Therefore, it is best to look for a professional SEO company or SEO service provider to help to establish your new company in Denver.
Selecting an SEO Company in Denver
So, we are clear that Denver is the place for startups, entrepreneurs, and new small businesses to jump into the race for financial independence and success. In order to achieve this, it is essential not only having a presence online but also implementing effective SEO strategies. This way you will have a clear opportunity not only to establish your brand but also to stand out from your competitors.
Now, designing, developing and performing an effective SEO strategy is not that simple. On the other hand, who says that the others aren’t applying SEO in their marketing strategies. Especially, if it is so effective. This is why it is imperative not only hiring but also selecting the best SEO company in Denver.
What to Look for in an SEO Company
Before selecting your SEO Company to help to establish your business, company or project in Denver, you should first make an internal analysis and think of the goals and objectives you want to achieve with your SEO campaign. Remember as we mentioned earlier, SEO provides a wide range of benefits besides hitting the first positions on the SERP. Therefore, take your time and consider whether you want to increase your website’s traffic, boost your sales awareness, increase your engagement, or simply boost your website’s performance. Knowing exactly what you want will give you leverage when scouting for SEO companies in Denver.
This is important because, many SEO companies out there will offer all-set-up strategies, which are supposed to be fail-proof. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a secret weapon in SEO. In fact, SEO is a mid to long-term process that requires constant updating and redefining, until perfection. So, regardless of your SEO objectives, if a company offers you secret formulas, you can scratch that one out.
Look for an SEO company that will begin by sitting down with you and perform an interview to understand your needs. Only this way, the SEO service provider will be able to develop a tailored strategy for your business or project.
A good SEO Company should have knowledge, expertise, and skills in both SEO faces; on-page, and off-page SEO. On-page SEO or on-site SEO is everything involving your webpage content and other elements found on your site. Through the use of essential tools like the composition and narrative’s structure, titles, headings, texts, keywords, images, videos, infographics, menus, internal links and everything at your disposal, you will be sending clear signals to search engine algorithms so they can interpret the meaning of your content accurately.
Off-page SEO techniques and strategies are mainly based on backlink building. When a user arrives at your site via a backlink from another trusted site, your site will rank higher on the search engine result page, especially if the link is coming from a well-known and respected site. This strategy is often and mistakenly underestimated by many startups and businesses. However, it is a significant and important step to perform.
A good SEO Company should be more than happy to show their results and how they work with each of their clients. Ask around and look for references. Even though we live in the digital communication era, nothing compares to asking a trustworthy source. Another tip to selecting the best SEO company in Denver is asking for certifications. Even though there are all sorts of certifications out there, the most significant ones come from the most significant Search Engine Providers, like Google or Bing.
Succeed in your Colorado market of choice. Take your time. Do your homework and trust your project or new business to the best SEO Company in Denver.
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