MaximS - 8:05 am on Nov 5, 2004 (gmt 0)

I can suggest my toughts concerning local search.

Except of all mentioned above I'd suggest local domains. In case if you are interested in British traffic - it is better to buy a .co.uk domain, because if user's query is targeted to be searched in UK then it is doubtful that a .ws .ca or .us domain will appear in SERPs. Many webmasters neglect this purchasing domains like domain.ws being temted with possibility of registering a popular keyword (I mean that if, for instance, dating.com is already registered, there can be a free domain in other zone). And then they wonder why there is no traffic. Imagine how would you search dating? I'd definitely search it using local search.

In case if I need to make a site for special city - I use the same - there is a subdomain for each city in my area.

In case if there is no city or localities domain names I register a domain name containing geographical name -
keyword-location.com - this also helps.

I also try to get as many links from local resources as I can. For instance if I need to improve "vehicles detroit" keyword, I register vehicles-detroit.com and then find as much sites mentioning detroit as I can and swap links thus rising relevancy of the "detroit" keyword.

Guess all those keywords people can search by - use #*$! or overture or whatever you want to get them. Sometimes I even notice people coming from Google by the telephone code of the area, so it is good to put a telephone number, postal index of the city abbrevation of the city, etc.

There are more things I use, but these are the basic tricks, which I consider as the "must to".

Hope this helps :) Regards! And sorry for my english ;)