Increase your chance of winning in the local search game

Build a strong local search presence – Action points for each area include:
 - Web Pages – Add your address, city, suburbs and neighbourhood names to your content, include a local event blog, exchange links with local bloggers and complete keyword research to identify and include localised terms
 - Local Search Profiles – Create and enhance profiles in local search directories and add images, video and product or service-related elements.
 - Ratings & Reviews – Claim and enhance your profile in primary review sites and engage with customers to actively stimulate reviews.
 - Citations & Listings – Check your details are included and correct across online directories, including association, alumni and trade group listings.
 - Local Social Love – Start up a local niche group or user community on Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, MeetUp or Biznik.

Generate reviews and testimonials – Apply the five-step approach to ensure you receive consistent and authentic reviews for your business.

Create content and secure high-quality links –
 - Blog – Create a blog with key-word-rich content which will enable you to compete in search engines and draw links from other blogs and sites.
 - Guest Post on Blogs – Offer to write content on other blogs that are useful and relevant to their audience (including a link back to your site of course!)
 - Submit Posts and Articles to Directories – Acquire links and more traffic to your site by submitting articles to article directories.
 - Social Press Releases – Compile regular news releases for even minor announcements to boost traffic and links
 - Blog Comments – Leave relevant blog comments to attract the attention of other readers and referrals from other blog owners to your content.
 - Create Profiles – Create social profiles on the Web with links to your site.
 - Social Bookmarking – Bookmark and tag your blog posts for relevant keyword topics so your content is seen by millions of people.

Capture social location behaviour – Create virtual rewards programs, advertise on mobile coupon networks and group coupon buying services (i.e. Groupon) or develop a game to enable check-ins via QR code (www.scvngr.com/).