Have you claimed your Google places business listing yet? Do that as a first step and fill out your business listing as much as possible.
You need to make sure you have as much citations as possible before you claim your GP listing. Citations are the amount of times your business is mentioned on the net. Use services like Yelp, etc.
mattrix329 is correct citations are very important to your business ranking, but you do not have to wait until you have lots of citations before you claim your Google listing. You want to gain control of your listing as soon as possible so someone else does not claim it. Believe it or not some business listings get hijacked by people who do not own the business, so by claiming it as soon as possible you can protect against this.
Let me clarify: citations are important and have value similar to a link for local business rankings. The crucial point about citations is that your address matches completely on as many sites as possible so the search engines can verify that it is the same business. If your business address or phone number do not match perfectly, then the search engine may think it is 2 separate businesses, and your citations could be credited to the incorrect address and thus affect your rankings. Because many businesses have the same name, citations are typically credited when the address or phone number match up. To help ensure your business address is consistent you should first verify that your information is correct with Localeze and InfoUSA. They provide their information to many of the search engines and many other business directories, so by making sure your business data is correct there all downstream sources that use their data will also have the correct information and your citations will match up. The third main data provider is Acxiom, managed by Universal Business Listings, but they now charge to update their information, so you will need to decide on your own if you want to pay to access it. Claiming your business information, such as Google Places, is vital so you can take control of it and verify and update your business information to make sure it is the same and consistent across all sites. So as I said earlier, you need to claim your Google Places listing to make sure your business information is correct. You do not have to have lots of citations before you can claim the listing. Claiming the listing is part of the process of verifying your citation information is correct for your business throughout the web. So as first steps, make sure your citation information is correct in as many places as possible, verify your data is correct at Localeze and InfoUSA, submit your business to many other large business directories (insiderpages, merchantcircle, yelp, etc.) and claim your business listing at Google and Bing.
As we are referenced in this article I would like to correct the information that states Acxiom is managed by Universal Business Listing (UBL) which is not accurate. UBL has a partnership with Acxiom, as well as with InfoUSA and to clarify, Acxiom is a data managment company similar to InfoUSA and should be included as a place to verify that your data is correct.