I am a call-out electrician, based in the town of Hendon, UK. Trying to rank for phrases like "emergency electrician newport". There is heavily weighted US only directory site listing plumbers in the US town of Newport, and as such I am finding it hard to rank well for newport in the U.K. - I think the US directory is so 'weighty' it just eclipses any mention of tiny little Newport, U.K. . I am thinking that if I submitted a free listing to the 'Newport' section of the US only site, I would have more weight for 'newport'. It does seem a bit dishonest, but it is a very unfair situation to be in if the US site makes everybody think that searches on 'Newport' are automatically referring to the U.S.! Is this considered 'black-hat'? Obviously I could upset the people that run that particular directory site if I do it, but would say Google also count this against me? Is this a harmful thing for me to do? Hows about I just put my company name in a free listing there, but no other details that are specific to me - Associate with my town name, but hide from anyone say 'You Lied to us'. Cheers for the help.
Google's geo-targeting should make sure that people in the UK see UK-biased results. I say 'should' because a lot of people have been noticing that in the last couple of months they've been a bit off in that respect, but I wouldn't expect it to be a permanant problem, and I'm in the UK, and when I do a search for 'Newport' - or for 'emergency electrician newport' the results I get are all for Newport in Gwent. I'm also completely confused why you want to rank for Newport if you're in Hendon. I wouldn't say it was black-hat to add yourself to a USA directory, but I would think it's completely pointless - people looking for a UK plumber won't look in an American directory, and one directory listing won't get you a good place in serps.
I would reccomend targetting UK based directories and gaining uk links to your site. Have you joined Googles Webmaster tools? You can tell them where your site is from and add yourself on local business listings (this is free where the map comes up with your search results). I would also reccomend making sure your address is listed in text on your site where Google spiders can crawl this.
Firstly apologies for saying I am in "Hendon", trying to rank for "newport". I live/work in Newport, Hendon somehow sneaked in there from another document I was copy-and-pasting to. oops. The problem occurs when people search, but do it on Google.com, without the UK localisation. Assumably I am then competing not just in the UK, but worldwide on the phrases in question. Thanks