If your business is geared only towards online sales and services,
optimizing for a local market might not be of any benefit to you–
but it still wouldn’t hurt. There’s always the chance that
prospective customers PREFER dealing with a local company, regardless
of the products in question.
If, on the other hand, you have a traditional storefront in
addition to an online web presence, optimizing for your local market
is a bit of a no-brainer. You want local customers to come walking
through your doors, because that helps pay the overhead of
maintaining a local shop, and adds a community reputation.
Being optimized for local markets will increase your visibility
DRAMATICALLY if the search query contains the local info as well. It
is not at all a stretch of the imagination that your 168 rank in
search results could shoot straight to the very top of the results
for your local market. And even if it doesn’t put you at the number
one position immediately, it will still give you a tremendous boost,
and the more visible your site is to begin with, the faster it will
climb to the top.
Start by putting your location in the title of your main page, or
all of your pages. That title is the link that people will see in
search engines, and if your city is right there for local customers
to see, they’ll know right away that they’ve found what they are
looking for.
Be sure that you use the location in your keywords, as well. We
can assume that you’re company address is on the page at least once,
so you may not have to worry excessively about keywording the
contents, but it won’t hurt your prospects to do so. But be certain
that you can be found by location in the title and keywords of your
page at the very least, and expand the possibilities where they can
be applied.