Local Search Engine Optimization Tips

Nowadays, having a locally-optimized Website can turn out to be even more beneficial than being globally-optimized. Why? Simply because today most Search Engines place local results at the forefront of SERPs. Therefore, you should make sure that you appear at the top of those local listings for keywords that relate to your site. Achieving this isn’t as hard as it sounds. Here a few tips to improve your local presence:

• Set your geographic location in Google’s Webmaster Tools. This helps tell Google what region your website should be associated with. This is a critical step that most webmasters overlook.
• Have a Physical Address in your Contact page. This is critical as most Search Bots look for an address when crawling that particular page, in order to associate your website with a region.
• Have your city/area/country in key places of your site such as: the title tag, h1/h2/h3 headers, footer area.
• Submit to local directories (Google the keyword “<<your city>> directory” to find a few relevant sites). Take a few minutes and submit your website to some of those local directories.

Here are a few localized directories that your website SHOULD be listed on, in order to improve your local visibility:

Local Search Engines
	Get listed on Yahoo! Local - Yahoo! Local helps you find the things you need in your neighborhood and beyond. It gives you the names and phone numbers of local services and businesses, and also shows you information related to them. For instance, you’ll get the name and address of your local deli, the time it opens, whether it accepts Visa, and maybe even how helpful the wait staff is. As Yahoo! Local evolves, we hope to provide expanded information to make your search results even more precise and comprehensive. More Yahoo! Local and Maps Blog
	Mail customer service – To Add Edit Delete listings on AskCity. They gets editorial and user reviews from a variety of sites around the web including CitySearch, Yelp.com and Insiderpages. The 5 star AskCity ratings come from the Best of Citysearch listings, which are based on editorial and user reviews. You can find out more information about these ratings at CitySearch.
	sign up online here – Business listings for the US provided by Superpages to Add Edit Delete go there. Microsoft Live Local, an online local search and mapping service that combines unique bird’s-eye imagery with advanced driving directions, Yellow Pages and other local search tools. Powered by Virtual Earth™ mapping and location platform, these features give users useful new ways to map and find directions to various locations and better visualize their surroundings from multiple aerial vantage points. their Blog
	get listed for free – To Add Edit Delete a listing. TrueLocal is a local search engine free to hundreds of thousands of users. It is an Internet business directory with brains because you can full text search on it. Search for your favorite brands like Nike shoes or Nokia phones to find local merchants carrying products and brands you are looking for. At TrueLocal, we strive for More Find. Less Search! After all, we want you to get off of the internet, turn off your computer, get in your car, and go buy something!
	get a free listing here – To Add Edit Delete a listing Local.com, launched in August 2005, is a local search engine owned and operated by Interchange Corporation. Powered by the company’s proprietary Keyword DNA and local Web indexing technologies, Local.com enables consumers to find local businesses, products and services. Local.com’s Advertiser network includes Citysearch, Verizon SuperPages.com and Yahoo!. Insider Pages merchant reviews and Pay Per Phone Call advertising listings appear in Local.com search results. LookSmart’s Furl.net powers Local.com’s “Save” feature on Local.com allowing users to easily save and organize pages found on Local.com and other sites around the Web. ShopLocal.com provides Local.com with local business results and circular content. OpenTable.com provides Local.com with enhanced restaurant information and online reservation links. Ingenio provides its pay-per-call listings to Local.com. Local.com and Judy’s Book have a partnership, which adds Judy’s Book reviews and local blogging capabilities to Local.com’s local search service.
	To Add Edit Delete a listing powered by mapquest and core data provided by infoUSA – AOL Local Search provides access to relevant information specific to your region. Find local businesses, breaking news and other information for your area. more
	What if I want to add a place to my list but can’t find it on your site? Feel free to email us to Add Edit Delete a listing at nationaleditor@citysearch.com with the name, location and city of the place you want to review. We will add it to our site and notify you when it is online. premium paid listings – Citysearch provides users with local information including restaurants, bars, hotels, movies, spa and beauty, tickets and events, and dozens of other categories. – Citysearch is a leading local search service, providing the most up-to-date information on businesses, from restaurants and retail, to travel and professional services. Citysearch empowers users to make informed decisions about where to spend their time and money by delivering trusted content, including more than 500,000 editorial profiles and user reviews of local businesses. more
	Yellow Pages: Find a Business – Should you wish to Add Edit Delete a listing on yellow pages listing, please contact YELLOWPAGES.COM directly. Yellow Pages: Find a Business – Yellow Page listings (searches by category or name) are obtained from YELLOWPAGES.COM and are updated on a regular basis. Individual business listings can be updated at any time by customer request.
	add & edit superpages – To Add Edit Delete a listing on SuperPages.com is the nation’s most advanced Internet Yellow Pages, with more than 17 million U.S. businesses listed and a growing base of advertisers that currently numbers almost 200,000. SuperPages.com enables users to find local and national businesses and compare goods and services before connecting with merchants across the country.
	add & edit superpages – To Add Edit Delete a listing BigBook Powered by Superpages provides yellow pages and business information for: Lawyers, Hotels, Restaurants, Florists, Mortgages, and more.
	add to InfoSpace YellowPages - To Add Edit Delete a listing on InfoSpace is one of the leading online directory services providers on the Internet. Our award-winning directory sites include Switchboard® and InfoSpace®. Our online yellow page sites are designed to make it easier for users to locate businesses, people and information online, while creating optimal revenue opportunities for advertisers and listings partners, such as Verizon SuperPages, BellSouth, and Dex Media.
	To Add Edit Delete a listing bizupdates@switchboard.com & worldpages.com - A InfoSpace Search & Directory markets Web search and online directory products that help users find the information they need while creating new revenue opportunities for merchants. InfoSpace Search & Directory operates a family of Internet properties that includes Dogpile.com, WebCrawler.com, and MetaCrawler.com as well as the online directory sites InfoSpace.com and Switchboard.com. InfoSpace also powers private-label search, along with online yellow and white pages, for a variety of Web sites.
	BellSouth Real White & Yellow Pages Online get their data from Acxiom.To Add Edit Delete a listing go here Acxiom – Add/Update your business listing – How to change an Acxiom listing
	get a free listing here? – needs some more investigation more
	add your business information here
	Get listed here Click “add to cart” even though you are not buying anything and proceed through check out. The Basic Business Profile is free. The Feature Business profile costs money. Note: Dex accepts advertising into its 14-state region from anywhere in the United States only. The Dex 14-state region includes Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Dex is a division of R.H. Donnelley, the nation’s third largest Yellow Pages publisher with significant online and local search capabilities. Everyday, consumers rely on the company’s more than 600 directories, online city guides, and search websites to find businesses that provide the services they need more
	To Add Edit Delete a Business listing in “Business Search” results are provided by our business listings partners. To add, edit or remove a U.S. listing from “Business Search” results, contact SuperPages.com. To add, edit or remove a Canadian listing from “Business Search” results, contact YellowPages.ca. The updated information will appear on our website in approximately 5-7 days.
	To Add Edit Delete a Business listing in “Business Search” results are provided by our business listings partners. To add, edit or remove a U.S. listing from “Business Search” results, contact SuperPages.com. To add, edit or remove a Canadian listing from “Business Search” results, contact YellowPages.ca. The updated information will appear on our website in approximately 5-7 days.
	Go to infoUSA To add a business listing, you must go through your local telephone service provider, who sends business listings to Yahoo! We can’t add listings directly to the database. All listings must come to us through our data provider, InfoUSA. If you’d like to be listed in the Yahoo! Yellow Pages, please use the following information to reach InfoUSA. Data from InfoUSA is normally updated every one to three months, so your business listing will not show up in Yahoo! Yellow Pages immediately after you send your request. More
	Sign Up Here YP.Com, a public company, is the leading independent provider of Online Business Listings. Our advertising solutions offer businesses a simple and affordable way of creating a web presence and avenues to market their products and services to local audiences online. Our product packages provide advertisers preferred placement in our yellow page search results and their own Mini Webpage.™ This allows our advertisers to have their information available to millions of potential customers, not only at a high traffic site, but also throughout our robust network. more
	To Add Edit Delete a listing yellowpages.com – YELLOWPAGES.COM LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. As a leading Internet Yellow Pages and search directory, YELLOWPAGES.COM is uniquely able to offer searchable directory listings. Whether you’re looking for a particular item, business, event, location or service, YELLOWPAGES.COM is your trusted online source for comprehensive national and local business information.
	Mapquest uses data from infoUSA To Add Edit Delete a listing go there. Since 1996, the website MapQuest.com has been helping people find places, get there, and find places nearby. With over 40 million unique visitors each month, MapQuest.com is consistently ranked as the #1 mapping site and #1 directories site (comScore Media Metrix), as well as a Top 10 US Web brand (Nielsen Netratings). more
	Dogpile is powered by infospace To Add Edit Delete a listing go there. It was built to give users the best search results available on the Web. This is accomplished by searching all the most popular engines and retrieving the best combined results. Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN, Ask.com, About, MIVA, LookSmart more
	http://inter800.com/freelist.htm Toll free listings only – In 1995, DIANCO, an innovator in the field of web-based Yellow Pages, created the first fully functional toll free directory on the World Wide Web. The Internet 800 Directory has become the definitive site on the Internet for people to locate products or services via a toll free number. Because of this position, The Internet 800 Directory attracts millions and millions of users each year. No other toll free directory enjoys this type of steady, continual growth. more
	add to InfoSpace YellowPages – InfoSpace’s branded search sites Dogpile® , WebCrawler® , MetaCrawler® and WebFetch™ make it easy to search more of the Web and find relevant results fast. By combining the relevancy weightings of multiple engines, InfoSpace metasearch returns the best results the Web has to offer, providing users with a more powerful and comprehensive way to search. In short, metasearch allows users to search up to 50% more of the Web than any single engine. Because metasearch aggregates results including paid advertising from several sources, each of InfoSpace’s branded search sites are better able to monetize search than any single search engine.
	To be listed on Metrobot, business owners must register and then submit their advertisement, which is currently a free service.
	To Add Edit Delete a listing go here Business listing plansTyloon is a combination of a local search engine with an online yellow pages directory allowing access to 15 million U.S. companies in English, Spanish, Chinese or a combination. Tyloon.com was published by the end of December, 2005, and now it is ranked sixth among the most popular Yellow Pages websites in the U.S. by Alexa, and is ranked 8th in North America and 15th worldwide.
	Add a free Listing here ZoomInfo is the premier business information search engine, with profiles on more than 35 million people and 3.8 million companies. ZoomInfo delivers a single site for quick and easy access to in-depth information on industries, companies, people more
	get listed for free here (Thanks Martin)