As experts in SEO in Utah we get a lot of questions from our customers about different ways that they can strengthen the authority of their website, and increase visibility. In the past there were many strategies that involved link building and external factors to move a website up to the top of search results. In recent years that strategy has changed. Many sites on the web would use poor quality links, and various “black hat” methods to game the system with Google. In turn Google has not given as much value to external linking, and has encouraged websites to focus on the content of their website.

Well written and thought out content is what is going to help your business stand out among your competitors. So many clients will ask what it is that they can to do help improve the content of their site. One of the most important things to focus on is Pillar Pages.

Pillar pages, also known as cornerstone content, are pages on your website meant to rank highly in search and attract users. These pages target important topics and high-traffic keywords that align with your overall business goals. These are the main pages that will be the foundation, or pillars of your content that guide users to different sources of information throughout your site.

Creating powerful, comprehensive pillar pages takes time and strategic planning. But all of that work and effort can pay off. With pillar content, you can drive significant organic traffic and increase visibility of your website which can be largely beneficial for your business..

If your existing pillar pages aren’t performing as hoped, it may be time to reassess your approach to developing this foundational content. There are some underutilized pillar page strategies that can help take your pages to the next level.

In this article, we’ll cover innovative, out-of-the-box ways to create pillar pages that attract search traffic and convert visitors. With guidance from Infogenix, a top Utah SEO company, you can build pillar content that stands out from your competitors.

What Makes a Good Pillar Page?

Before diving into new strategies, let’s review the hallmarks of effective pillar pages:

• Targets high-value keywords and topics related to your business. This gives the page relevance and search potential.
• Provides extensive information on the topic. Pillar pages take a deep dive into their subjects, offering at least 1,500+ words of content.
• Useful for visitors beyond just search engines. The content solves problems, educates, informs and engages human readers.
• Optimized for SEO best practices on and off the page. This includes elements like meta titles and descriptions, headings, media, links, site authority and more.
• Designed for easy skimming and consumption on both desktop and mobile. Clear formatting is key.
• Promoted heavily internally and externally. Integration with navigation and promotion across marketing helps awareness.

With these principles in mind, let’s explore innovative pillar page approaches to try.

Leverage Different Content Formats

Too many pillar pages simply follow a basic blog post format. While well-written long-form articles have their place, utilizing other content formats can help your pillars attract more attention and engagement.

Some alternative formats to consider for pillar pages from the SEO experts at Infogenix include:

• Ultimate guides: Create expansive manuals, handbooks or blueprints on your topic, structuring information into logical sections. Include tables of contents for easy navigation.
• Research reports/case studies: Develop authoritative research-backed content that provides statistics and data on your focus area.
• Courses/training programs: Outline a step-by-step lesson sequence for readers to follow. From cooking to software skills, how-to training content can work very well.
• Assessments and quizzes: Let visitors take a short test to receive customized results and recommendations based on their answers. This engages audiences.
• Worksheets and templates: For practical topics, provide printable downloads like meal planners, financial calculators, fitness trackers. These are shareable.
• Interactive content: Build pillar pages that allow manipulation like customizable product configurators or design builders.

The Utah SEO professionals at Infogenix can help develop pillar pages in the format that best fits your goals, audience and content. Think beyond basic blog articles to create truly unique resources.

Tap Into Your Visual Assets

Even the most well-researched pillar pages fall flat without visual elements to enhance the content for readers. Take advantage of visual assets to create more engaging pillar pages:

• Images: Original, high-quality photos, graphics, and illustrations improve storytelling and appeal for visitors. Ensure images include keyword-optimized alt text.
• Videos: Embed relevant videos right into pillar pages to demonstrate concepts or share tutorials. Short 1-3 minute videos often perform best.
• Infographics: Turn statistics, data points, tips and workflow processes into compelling visual info graphics. These make complex topics more digestible.
• Slideshares: Convert your pillar page content into a presentation format. Slideshares can live alongside or replace written pillar content for added diversity.

Our SEO specialists frequently incorporate custom visual assets into pillar pages for Utah companies to boost engagement and rankings.

Get Inspired by Competitors

One shortcut to creating innovative pillar pages is looking at what your competitors are doing well. Perform keyword research to identify topics competitors are ranking for. Analyze their pillar pages for these terms to find creative approaches you can model or improve upon.

A few things to look for when reviewing competitors’ pillar pages:

• Overall content format: Do they use a unique content style like assessments or toolkits that performs well?
• Calls to action: Note effective CTAs integrated into pages to generate conversions.
• Interactive elements: Do they incorporate engaging design features like calculators, configurators or quizzes you can adopt?
• Visual assets: What types of images, graphics, videos or other media help their pillar content stand out?
• Topic coverage: Are there areas of the topic they don’t fully cover that present content gaps to fill?

The SEO team at Infogenix frequently studies competitors’ pillar pages for clues on enhancing our client’s own pillar content for the Utah market.

Promote Your Pillars

One of the most underutilized pillar page best practices is promotion. It’s not enough to just develop amazing content. You must actively promote your new and updated pillar pages to get them in front of your audience.

Some smart pillar page promotion tactics from Infogenix include:

• Feature links prominently in main site navigation and footers.
• Create category pages to showcase all pillar content on a topic. Crosslink between pillars.
• Publish links to new pillar pages in blog posts, newsletters, emails.
• Promote pillars through social media updates and PPC ads. Retarget visitors.
• Build internal links to pillars where relevant from other pages on your site.
• Pitch pillar content to other sites for possible backlinks and mentions.
• Distill pillars into shareable graphics for social media. Quote key stats.
• Turn pillars into gated offers in exchange for email signups to generate leads.
• Promote new pillars on-page with bold callouts, banners, announcements etc.

With smart distribution and promotion, your high-quality pillars will reach their full potential for increasing your Utah SEO visibility.

Listen to Your Analytics

The final step to perfecting pillar pages is analyzing performance data to identify optimization opportunities. Leverage your analytics tools to understand:

• Traffic volume – Which pillar topics are resonating most with searchers? Is traffic steadily growing month over month?
• Search performance – How are pillars ranking for target keywords? What additional terms are they ranking for?
• Engagement metrics – Scroll depth, time on page, clicks can indicate engaging content.
• Links – Are pillars attracting external links? What anchor text are links using?
• Conversions – Are calls to action within pillars driving desired goals like downloads or sales?

Monitoring metrics helps the SEO professionals at Infogenix continuously improve existing pillars and shape new high-performing content. We tailor pillar pages to actual visitor behavior patterns.

Stand Out with Strategic Pillar Pages

Developing truly effective pillar pages takes research, creativity and optimization. But by applying innovative thinking and formats, tapping into visual assets, learning from competitors, promoting your content and listening to data, your brand can create monumental pillar content.

If you need help building pillar pages that stand out or want to push existing pillars to the next level, the Utah SEO experts at Infogenix are here to help. Contact us to learn more about our pillar page creation and optimization services. With strategic pillars tailored to your business, you can reinforce your website foundation and own organic search rankings for your business niche.

For businesses trying to rank locally in Utah, focusing your SEO efforts on the right areas can make a huge difference in driving visibility and traffic. With local SEO best practices constantly evolving, it’s crucial to stay on top of the latest algorithms and ranking factors. As we move more into 2024, there are some key local SEO elements that should be priorities for Utah businesses wanting to stand out.

Below we’ll explore some of the most important local SEO ranking factors expected to impact listings in 2024 for Utah businesses and provide tips to optimize each area.

#1: Google Business Profile Optimization

Of all the local SEO factors, a complete and optimized Google Business Profile (GBP) listing should be the foundation for any business trying to rank in Utah. GBP acts like your website homepage in local search results. Ensuring your Utah listing is fully fleshed out and providing a great user experience is critical.

Some key ways for Utah businesses to optimize their GBP listing:

• Fill out all fields like images, description, hours, services, etc.
• Set up GBP posts to routinely engage Utah followers.
• Enable messaging to allow customer communication.
• Monitor reviews and respond promptly.
• Verify the listing and claim it properly.
• Include good quality photos that showcase your Utah business.
• Ensure your address, phone and websites are all accurate.

Google Business Profile optimization should be ongoing for Utah companies to keep listings robust, helpful and active. Remaining active tells Google you are also active with your business and are engaging with customers.

#2: Positive Local Reviews

Reviews are a strong local ranking signal, with Google often favoring Utah businesses with more positive local feedback. Having a steady stream of 4 and 5 star reviews on your GBP listing and other sites like Yelp and Facebook helps improve local visibility.

Tips for Utah brands to generate more good local reviews:

• Add review links to your website and email signatures.
• Occasionally survey customers asking them to leave reviews.
• Respond to reviewers thanking them for the feedback.
• Offer promotions or discounts for leaving reviews.
• Resolve the underlying issues behind any negative reviews.

Quality matters more than quantity for Utah companies, so focus on building authentic positive sentiment.

#3: Local Link Building

Earning high-quality local links remains important for driving local rankings for Utah businesses. Having authoritative sites in you Utah linking back to your site tells Google your business is endorsed locally.

Great options for local link building for Utah companies include:

• Get listed on Utah-specific citation/directory sites relevant to your industry.
• Guest post on local Utah blogs or news sites linking back to your content.
• Sponsor local Utah events, nonprofits or teams and have them link to your site.
• Pursue local business partnerships that include link exchanges.
• Build relationships with Utah influencers to earn mentions.

Choose link prospects strategically and build them slowly over time. Avoid low-quality local directories or shady link networks.

#4: On-Page Local SEO Optimization

Your on-page SEO signals like titles, content, tags and schema markup provide vital local relevance and context for ranking in Utah. Be sure to incorporate location-relevant keywords and data.

Key elements for Utah businesses to optimize include:

• Business name, street address, phone and opening hours in your about page that matches your Google Business Profile.
• City and state names mentioned naturally in text where applicable.
• Alt text on images with geographic keywords when relevant.
• Tags and categories that include your city, neighborhood and ZIP code in Utah.
• Structured local business data markup for search engines to recognize.

On-page signals should consistently reinforce your Utah geographic service area and keywords. But you also will want to ensure that the content is also not overly saturated with keywords you are trying to rank for. Infogenix can help you properly optimize your site for local SEO, you can schedule a free evaluation from us here

#5: Mobile-Friendly Local Experience

With local searches happening more on smartphones than anywhere else, having a fast and mobile-friendly site is now vital for Utah brands. Ensure your site is mobile responsive with easy access to location info.

Tips for improving mobile local experience in Utah:

• Optimize site speed by reducing image sizes, enabling compression, using caching plugins.
• Eliminate popups or interstitials that hinder mobile navigation.
• Use a click-to-call button to enable easy phone access.
• Have a prominent “Directions” button for accessing map locations.
• Display opening hours and address prominently.

Google is paying close attention to how well optimized sites are for local-mobile usage when ranking locally in Utah.

The Perfect Formula for Local SEO Success

These are five valuable facets that provides a powerful formula for local SEO success in 2024 for Utah businesses. Conduct regular audits of your GBP health, local link profile, on-page optimization, reviews and mobile site experience. Be sure to also analyze your key Utah competitors’ strategies and local rankings to identify areas you may be lagging. Consistently enhancing these elements will ensure your brand shows up when Utah customers search for local businesses like yours.

If you would like help with your Local SEO from a Utah company with over 25 years of experience then contact Infogenix for a free proposal today

The rise of voice search has been one of the biggest developments shaping SEO and marketing over the past few years. As more people use voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant for queries, optimizing content for voice search is becoming increasingly important for companies in Utah. In 2024, voice looks to take an even bigger role in search. Brands that want to stay visible and competitive in search need an effective voice search strategy. In this post, Utah SEO agency Infogenix looks at how voice search will likely impact SEO in 2024 and tips to prepare.

The Growing Importance of Voice Search

Voice search usage has been steadily rising and is projected to continue growing. Some key statistics:

• 25% of all searches are expected to be done by voice in 2024.
• 36% of Americans own smart speakers and will make a purchase from a business they did a voice search for.
• 41% of people use voice search daily.

With voice emerging as a preferred search method for many, SEO strategies for Utah businesses will need to shift to optimize for voice. Brands that perfect voice search now will have a head start on competitors.

Voice Search SEO Challenges in 2024

Optimizing for voice search comes with some unique challenges that the experts at Infogenix can help Utah companies address:

• Queries are typically longer, more conversational phrases rather than just keywords. This means content must match more natural language customer questions.
• Voice search results favor direct authoritative answers rather than links. Optimizing to answer questions clearly and concisely will be key.
• Local search plays a bigger role as location-based results are highly valued. Local SEO signals like GMB listings will be vital.
• Featured snippets highlighting a direct answer in search results are critical real estate. Brands will aim for their content to trigger these.
• Voice search is 100% mobile so optimizing for mobile will continue being imperative.

Tips for Voice Search Optimization

Here are some tips from Infogenix on optimizing SEO for voice search in 2024:

• Focus on long-tail natural language queries – Study search trends to identify full question-style phrases customers are using and target those in content.
• Answer questions clearly – Structure content to directly answer commonly asked customer questions concisely. Use headers, FAQs, etc.
• Optimize featured snippets – Research ways to trigger the highlighted search result answers Google provides.
• Include audio content – Podcasts, audio books, and other voice content optimize for voice input.
• Build local pages – Have location pages with key information like hours, address, and phone number.
• Optimize for mobility – Ensure site speed, UI/UX, and accessibility are optimized for mobile.

The voice search landscape will likely continue evolving quickly so staying on top of trends and leveraging new techniques will be imperative for Utah companies.

Voice Optimization for E-Commerce Brands in Utah

For e-commerce brands in Utah, voice search presents opportunities to engage shoppers through conversational commerce:

• Optimize product schema markup – Helps voice assistants understand product data.
• Build shoppable content – Product roundups, gift guides, demos can enable voice shoppers.
• Include calls-to-action in descriptions – Suggest what the viewer should do next like “Learn more” or “Buy now.”
• Highlight promotions in snippets – Featured snippets can showcase sales or offers.
• Enable voice-initiated transactions – Support voice purchases through platforms like Alexa.

As more consumers use voice technology for online shopping, Utah brands must ensure their sites provide an optimal experience.

Preparing Your SEO for Voice Search Success

Voice search reach will continue expanding in 2024. The SEO professionals at Infogenix can help Utah businesses optimize their web presence for voice queries and featured snippets now to gain an edge. Ask yourself:

• What questions are customers likely asking my business using voice search?
• How can I directly answer their questions in an authoritative way?
• Is my site’s UI clear and easy to navigate by voice?
• Are my pages optimized for long-tail keywords?
• How can I better optimize for local searches?

By addressing these areas now with help from Infogenix’s SEO experts, you can ensure your SEO strategy evolves along with voice search adoption.

The world of search marketing will look quite different in 2024. But brands that seize the voice search opportunity today with guidance from experienced agencies like Infogenix will be in the best position to capitalize on its continued growth and visibility. Don’t wait to start planning for voice search success. Schedule a free estimate with Infogenix to help you optimize your website for voice search and overall SEO.