One of the simplest things you can do to help your chances of getting indexed by the major search engines is going local! Getting your website to do well in local search results is becoming easier than ever. The major search engines, most particularly Ask.com and Google place enormous weight on the location of each search user when determining results to display for their search queries. There are several very simple but highly effective things SEOs can do to enhance a website’s chances of displaying well for local searches.

The first and simplest is the provision of accurate address and contact information. Make it as easy as possible for search users (and search engines) to find your physical location by giving them as much information as possible. In order of operations, the basic information is as such:

1/ Business Name + Keyword Phrase
2/ Street and Suite (or Unit) + Larger geo-reference such as shopping mall, school or other public space)
3/ City + Neighborhood(s)
4/ State or Provice
5/ zip or postal code
6/ Going as far as including longitude and latitude and GPS coordinates wouldn’t hurt.

The idea is to associate the business with the communities it serves. A restaurant, for instance, can add several elements to its ABOUT or CONTACT pages that reference neighborhoods, schools, shopping malls and nearby streets while introducing the staff or giving explicit driving directions.

A second local SEO technique is the inclusion of maps ( Google Local Business Center).

Though used by the fewest active searchers, Ask.com provides (by far) the best local mapping technology of all major search engines.

There is no reason why a link to maps from all major search engines can’t be included on a CONTACT page.