earlpearl - 2:05 pm on Mar 29, 2006 (gmt 0)

Do you have a local adddress on the site? There is a google patent on local searches. It references having an address and/or phone number on the site referncing the localness. If not put one up.

If the site is new and sandboxed in google my observations are that this is a method for unsandboxing.

State/regional traffic for a term/geo description is small. In many cases the traffic will be dramatically smaller than the national term.

Say the term is "hiking clubs" Traffic volume for Ohio hiking clubs might be 1-5% of the term for hiking clubs. (probably similar to the percentage of the Ohio population to the population of the US or smaller (the world).

Study the heck out of keywords. There is usually a great number of terms related to the number 1 term that searchers use ie; hiking club, hiking clubs, walking clubs, walking groups, etc. etc.

The secondary terms are called the long term. Searchers will search on the long term at a huge amount. Often the sum total of the secondary or long tail terms far outweighs the volume of searches for the single most popular term.

Do extensive keyword research.

I don't think this works as well as it did in the past but in various forums there are endless new directories being advertised. go to digital point forum. Every week there are new directories to add your links to. If the term is relatively non-competitive bls from the directories with proper anchor text may do the trick for google rankings.

Good luck.