hey for those who are local seo'ers...here's a couple of tips that'll help you out that's helped us. * a domain with the main kw in it or chose a local domain name * city name and surrounding cities in the metas, content and inner linking with your city location and surrounding cities * subpage content with zip codes * drip links * google & yahoo maplinks and link your keyword along with your physical address * get the site on a good handful of review sites...yelp, citysearch, google local etc...for BLs. don't bs and leave rave reviews We've helped out a handful of our local businesses and were able to get them on the first page. nothing shockingly new here but just sayin...it's helped us, so hope these help some of you...
local IM is the way to go but it means getting away from the monitor and on to the phone - something many are not willing to do even though the money is waiting there. ranking for chiropractor is hard but ranking for chiropractorillionois is less hard (made even easier if you can buy chiropractorillionois.com)
One of the most important tips for local search is data integrity. Be sure on all your local directory and yellow page submissions your business name, address and phone are an EXACT MATCH to the way you have it listed on your Google Places page. Also be sure you don't have duplicate listings. (most companies do.) If you do, you need to carefully merge & perge them or it will hurt your results. Additionally don't add any geo modifiers to your biz name. It needs to be your actual legal name or you can get penalized. Hope this helps and best of luck!