Optimizing Your Site For Local Search

[mandy]

1. Make sure that you have a crawler friendly web site

The first step in improving your business performance in local search engines is to make sure that the search engines can easily crawl your site, and identify your business keywords. Minimize the use of tables, and avoid deeply nested tables. Make sure that your business name and address are featured prominently on the page as text, and not hidden from the crawlers in an image file. Your page title should include your business name, address and key words. Place an "H1" header near the top of the page that also has your business name, address, and key words.

2. Include your business address twice on the page

In addition to placing your business address prominently on the page, also include it in the footer. Abbreviate the business state in one of the addresses, and spell it out in the second. Abbreviated states are sometimes misinterpreted by the crawlers. For example, MD represents both a state and a doctor.

3. Check out your business listing on the major search engines

Check out your business listings on Google, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Search. If your business is not found, you should submit a listing at Google, Yahoo, and Superpages (for Microsoft Live Search).

For each business listing, make sure that your information is correct, your business description is complete, and that it uses the same keywords that you are using on your web site....

full article: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627073