Once of the biggest changes to be made in 2009 affecting small to medium business’  were the changes that were made for location based searching or Local Search. This affects your Google SEO strategy your Yahoo SEO strategy and most other search engines and if understood can help improve your rankings significantly.

So what exactly is local search and how can you use it with in your seo marketing strategy.

Previously Google would provide the most relevant search results from their entire database. For example if you are living in Brisbane and did a search for a “plumber”. The business’ that came back in the search result could just as likely have been from America.

Google realised that this doesn’t provide you with the most relevant result. More often than not, when you are doing a search you are most interested in results that are from business’ close to you. It makes sense, if you are searching for business’ and services then you aren’t going to choose business’ that are in a different timezone!

Now they take into account the location that you are in and the location that each search result is in and adjust the Google rankings accordingly.

If you want to optimise your site for local search and work some seo magic then I suggest that you spend some time looking at this resource on Local Search Ranking Factors. The top 5 recommendations from this are :

1. Create or Claim Your Local Business Listing
   You should create or claim your local business listing. Google may have already created a listing for you that you would then need to claim. Through this process you provide more information to Google about your business and it’s location that it can use when providing search results.
2. Local Business Listing Address in City of Search
   When creating your listing you provide the location of your business. If the person searching is in the same location as your business then this will increase your chances of getting a good listing.
3. Associate Your Business Listing with the Proper Categories
   It’s important that you choose the correct categories when updating your local business listing.
4. Use the Product / Service Keyword in the Local Business Listing Title
   If it makes sense by all means use your product or service keyword in your local business listing title. Try to keep it so that it makes sense though.
5. Use the Product / Service Keyword in the Local Business Listing Description
   A well crafted, descriptive, keyword rich description is imperative for a local listing to succeed. It’s important to perform thorough keyword research to determine the highest relevant volume of local search terms in your geographic area to determine the keyword combinations for products, services, and location.

Local Search with these changes in 2009 has become a critical element to a small to medium business’ seo strategy in Australia and world wide. By understanding and using these techniques to your advantage you can help get your business ranked in the top 10 for your most profitable keywords.