Local Search

"over 20 per cent of Google's search queries now have a localised intent"
.net magazine July 2011

"Britain do more than eighty per cent of their trading with other businesses or customers based within a thirty mile radius of themselves."
Carolyn's Business MK Column Dec 2010

The search engines job is to give you a relevant match to your search. Knowing that a vast amount of searches have local intent there has been a lot if investment into providing local results. Everyone has seen the maps appearing when they do a search and what started as just a few businesses showing can now result in almost a full page of local companies.

It used to be a separate part of the search engine listings and we had instances where our clients appeared on page one twice, once for their natural listing and one for their local map position. Unfortunately this no longer happens as they have combined these listings. The good news is that we can help promote your business locally for natural and local search queries.

TO DO
If you want local traffic you need to be able to promote your website for local keywords. The first thing you need to do is sign up to the following search engines and list your company (if you have not already done so). These will help and they are all free.
Google places www.google.co.uk/places
Yahoo local uk.local.yahoo.com
Bing local www.bingforbusiness.com

Keyword in your town
Motive9 have search engine promotion product specifically designed to target page one positions in Google for searches of your keyword in your town/city.
www.motive9.co.uk/keyword-your-town.html

Tips
send clients a link to your google places page and ask them to submit a review.
Upload your logo as a picture.

Side note
If you are using adwords and want to target a local area, it is possible to set a radius in miles around a town to target. These are in your campaign settings -> location.