I have an important question I'd like to ask any local search experts. We have a site that is an ecommerce site that sells in the US and our offices are in one city location. We have a places page and show up in local search in our city. I see Google local search as a growing trend in 2011 and think that far more queries will be yielding local search results, so I would like to put a strategy together to have a local presence in other cities in the US. Is this in any way possible to do if we only have one business location? We aren't at a point where we can open brick and mortar stores in the US, nor does it fit our business model. Is it possible to create affiliate websites and create business id's of any sort in multiple cities so that the websites in each city can rank in Google local search results? I feel like the local A-G search results are taking a lot of click throughs away from the standard natural search listings and this will likely grow over time. I understand why Google is doing this and it is great for local business. But we want to compete at the local level. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Great way to get banned from google I dont think their is a way to cheat thte local search other then having physical adresses.
Google Boost Is Your Answer. http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/10/advertise-your-local-business-with.html I'm using in here in Florida and the results are great. Now I can show on the maps for thousands of different phrases. It's not free though..it's like PPC
Google Boost is not SEO at all, right? We are talking about SEO and it is really good questioning the OP asked. Actually, if you are in location-dependent niche (as Google think), only way to compete with local businesses is to be 1st in the SERP.
Actually Google Boost is SEO Based. When you sign up, it appears Google crawls your website to assign your keywords..but it won't do you much good other than your physical location