1. Your Site’s Contact Page

   • First of all – have a contact page!  Title it “Contact” as is the convention around the web, and name it something like “contact.html” or “contact-my-company.php.”
   • Include a full address including city, state, and zip code within the locale that you’re targeting.
   • Include a local phone number, i.e. – make sure the area code matches the the targeted location’s.
   • Have multiple locations?  If you run a multi-national corporation, why not hire an SEO company to rank your locations because it gets a little tricky and is outside the scope of this post.

2. Title Tags, Meta Tags, and Your URL

   • Use a hCard in your website’s head section.  Learn here, create here. Simply use it as the markup/HTML for that part of your contact page.
   • City/State in Contact Page Title Tag
   • City/State in Index Page Title Tag
   • Location in URL (Ex. – AthensGAWebDesigners.com)

3. Your Local Business Profile

   • 1st, go to Google’s Local Business, and claim your business’s profile if you haven’t yet.
   • Profile using local phone number (area code matching the target location)
   • Location in Profile Title
   • Service/Product in Business Category Fields

4. Customer/Client Reviews

   • Customer Reviews are Important!
   • And it’s not just the reviews on Google Maps itself -
   • Google feeds it’s listings with dozens if not hundreds other third party review sites.  For example: Kudzu.com, Yelp, InsiderPages, and many industry specific review services.

5. Pitfalls & What not to do

   • Don’t List a 1-800 number on your profile or on your contact page, I know it makes no sense.  Have one, get your web guys to use an image to display it.
   • Negative Reviews – I know they’re hard to stop, but if you can contact the reviewer & ask them to remove it – do it.
   • Don’t use multiple Business Profiles with:
     1. The same business name
     2. The same phone number
     3. The same address (this one is particularly detrimental)

GreenBiz Local includes a map search function, city/state directory, and a paid upgrade option. The paid option allows users to change their map marker from a little red one to a big, pretty green one as well as a new tab for a business description, and one more for images of the business and/or it’s products.