One cold rainy day many years ago Google created a measuring device called PageRank. With innocent intentions it was supposed to be used to measure the 'popularity' of your site and pages. Just like with any feature released it didn't take long for webmasters to figure out how to abuse the system.

Since that time many people have been tricked into thinking that PageRank is the magical number that will make you rich. As I mentioned in a previous post PageRank is only one of hundreds of factors the search engines look at related to your ranking position. There has been such misinformation on the Internet by SEO cowboys trying to get your money to increase your PageRank that even Google has started backing away on the importance of that figure.

Recently I was reading a post about why PageRank ...

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...

One thing I believe in is don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. This is a protective philosophy but applies to many aspects of the Internet. Anyone can make a website and tout themselves as an expert in this and drum up some spreadsheets showing why their "system" is right.

As an alternative to sitting around the campfire telling stories with the SEO cowboys why not get your information straight from the horse's mouth. Want to know the latest information about Google? I follow the blog of a Google engineer Matt Cutts. He is very well known in the SE world as he and his team are at the forefront of Google Technology.

Recently on Matt's blog he discussed recent updates to Google's documentation....

One of the main problems with stale websites is that the owner didn't realize that websites need to be updated regularly. If you want to stay competitive on the Internet then you have to plan to spend time with your site on a regular basis. If you do not have the time to spend with your site then hire someone who knows what they are doing.

Many people claim to be SEO experts and try to sell you on some plan to boost your search engine rankings. Most of the time those companies intentionally or not don't do a very good job for your site. Yes everyone wants their site to do business worldwide after all that is why they call it the World Wide Web.

That is a great strategy; however, I must ask. Have you exhausted all your local markets already? SEO should start at the local level as well as on the global level. Depending on your business SEO Localization can make a serious difference.

There are 6 strategies that you "MUST BE DOING" to optimize your site locally while optimizing your site globally.