More often than not search engines and local services are being used by people in your hometown to find what they are looking for. A deep research has shown that somewhere in the neighborhood of 71% of households do some kind of search for a local product or service on a daily basis.

 On a daily basis!

That is the reason why every local search is becoming more and more important to your advertising campaign and major search engines are rushing to become the next local search engine. But, you may ask, what is Local Search and how can it be helpful to my Business?

We are going to focus this discussion on local searching using Google since they are the predominant engine on the market. The same theories and practices can be applied to all regular search engines. HINT: Webmasters should review results from all engines!

Recently it appears that Google has updated the PageRank across the board. My site went up from a PR 1 to a PR 2. I have been doing some directory work lately and could contribute that work to the increase in PR. From other posts you can see my relation and opinion about the importance of relevant reciprocal linking. Not only with other sites but with other directories.

For example as a web developer there are a ton of directories that will put a link to your site in their directory for free + you most likely have to add a link to them on your home page. If you scroll to the bottom of my home page you will see a list of the directories that I have listed my site in.

The best part about the directories is that you get more qualified traffic from them. Not everyone knows about my site and by having my site listed in national directories I get more exposure. I have already seen an increase in traffic and by viewing the statistics I can see many visitors are already coming from those directories.

 Here are some secrets to finding good directories...