Of all that’s been written and said about local search, there’s one single-most important piece: It’s David Mihm’s annual “Local Search Ranking Factors” study.
The first one came out 4 years ago (at almost exactly the time I got started in local search). It’s the Rosetta Stone for all local search specialists and for many more business owners all over the world.
This year I had the honor of being one of the 41 contributors. Answering the questions put everything I’ve learned so far through the wringer, but it was a lot of fun, very eye-opening, and more than worth it.
Even if you do nothing else for your local-search visibility today, first read David’s extremely helpful recap.
Then give the 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors themselves a read-through.
You’ll definitely have to pull up a chair, but you’ll be glad you did.
A huge thanks to David for masterminding the whole thing and bringing it to life – as always – and to my fellow contributors for their superb insights and dedication to the local-search community.
By the way, if you have a question about any of the ranking factors, my two cents on them, etc., just leave a comment!
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It’s possible to get a business visible in Google Places and other local search engines without using any tools…but why would you want to?
= Extremely user-friendly tool.
= A tool that’s good to use repeatedly—both before you’re visible and after, as part of a maintenance routine.
= Paid tool, but a heck of a good investment. (Any tool that doesn’t have this symbol next to it is free.)
In the world of local search, GetListed is handier than duct tape and a Swiss Army Knife put together. It instantly analyzes how locally visible your business is and gives you specific recommendations for how to get more visible. Plus, the rest of the site contains some 
Before 
Beautifully simple, yet powerful: a giant list of all the business categories you can choose for your Google Places page. Use it to make sure you’ve picked out all the categories that may apply to your business. It also includes synonyms corresponding to each category, which help if you’re unsure about which categories to pick. Created by none other than 
Getting good-old-fashioned links to your website can help your Google Places rankings. In a nutshell, this is the best link-finding tool I’ve used. It’s made by 
You can learn a lot about how to rank well in your specific local market if you spend enough time poking around on your competitors’ Places pages to find out what categories they use, which citations they have, and so forth. Local Search ToolKit lets you gather that competitive intel instantly.
I had a brilliant idea: little buttons you could put on your website that customers simply could click to write reviews for you…but then I learned the chaps at 
A great way to keep quick tabs on your reviews (how many and what ratings) on the most important review sites, with a really handy “dashboard” feature. MyReviewsPage also has a number of other features for monitoring and gathering customer reviews.
Google’s bots like it if you add your business name, address, and phone number to the bottom of every page of your website. But the bots are tickled pink if you can format your name, address, and phone number with a few specific lines of code before doing so. This format is called hCard. You can prepare the code you need at 
The more information Google has about the location of your business, the more likely it is you’ll rank well locally. Whereas a regular sitemap file is a way to tell search engines where the pages of your website are located, a geositemap file tells search engines where your business itself is located. The easy-to-use GeoSitemap Generator lets you create the two files you’ll need to upload to your site.
A simple plugin-like tool that shows you a really sexy heatmap of where your website visitors click, the traffic sources those clicks come from, how far down the page they scroll, and other crucial intel.
A screenshot tool and photo-editor wrapped up into one very handy bundle. You need 
Want to know where your competitors are getting publicity (and citations and links)? Need to know if they’re talking smack about your business? Set up some Google Alerts and you’ll receive emails from Google that let you know what’s been published on the web about you or your competitors.
I discover a lot about Google Places by wrestling with it all day, every day. But I’m also constantly scratching my head at questions—things that I just started wondering about based on observations, or that people have asked me.
The problem is that getting dozens of citations is about as enjoyable as getting a colonoscopy. You want it to be over with as quickly as possible, so that you can get back to running your business and enjoying life.
9. Personal suggestion: don’t try to do all the citations one sitting. It’s easier to mess them up, and it’s even easier to get totally sick of citation-building and slow down to a crawl. You can take your time: it takes weeks for your business info to get processed on each site and to result in citations that give your business a boost in Google Places.
Fine, so maybe it’s not yet a book of Google Places slang. But “book” just sounds better than “compendium.”
The problem: you’re not visible in Google Places and are considering one of two things: rolling up your sleeves to try to get visible yourself, or paying someone else to help you do it.
Researching your local market. Before you try to get visible in Google Places, you need to find out whether the search terms you want to get visible for actually trigger the local search results, see how many local competitors you have, use the Google Keyword Tool to find the most relevant and searched-for terms, etc. Look before you leap.
Creating Google Places page/ Tweaking Places info. This is actually the quick part. If you spend a significant amount of time messing with your Google Places listing, you’re doing something wrong. Google doesn’t like frequent changes.
Gathering citations. The tedious process of listing your business on third-party sites. Crucial.
Producing content. It’s smart to get some in-depth, informative articles for your site or blog. Good content can win you quality links without your even having to pester anyone. Or you can put together some short, purely informative, non-promotional videos that a potential customer would find helpful (see “Creating videos,” below).
Data control. You need be on a constant crusade to remove duplicate listings, and to remove or fix any listings with incorrect info on your business. To do this you need to keep an eye on the listings that show up in your Google Places “Dashboard,” and you also routinely need to check your listings on third-party directories (like Yelp) and on major data-providers (like InfoUSA) .
Website tweaks. Optimizing title tags, description tags, H1s, etc. Business owners often hurt themselves by spending time trying to stuff keywords, or by constantly fiddling with these on-page factors. Use a real light touch on the search terms you include, write them with your customers in mind (not Google), and for God’s sake don’t keep changing them around.
Asking for reviews. Customer reviews have become more and more important to your ranking—especially ones written through customers’ Google accounts. There are a number of ways you can drum up reviews, but whatever method(s) you choose, you need to keep at it for the long haul.
Uploading pictures. It’s worth taking the time to put a few good ones on your Places page. It’s not worth constantly changing them or laboring over them to death.
Searching for links. It’s a big Google Places ranking-booster to have links to your site from sites that are relevant to your industry and/or city. To get good ones requires some poking-around, even once you’ve created the good content that you’ll need to be able to offer in exchange for the links.
Adding coupons and/or “Posts.” Coupons are always good, but extremely quick to create on your Places page. Same with the tiny, 160-character Posts—aka “real-time updates”—that you can add to your page (you can do this from the top-right area of your Places “Dashboard”). Still, neither of these is worth getting OCD over.
Social media. Good in small doses, but not worth too much of your time, especially if your goal is to attract customers through Google Places.
Scouting competitors. See where their customers write them reviews, see the videos they’re adding to their Places pages, see what content they’re adding to their sites and providing for other sites, etc. Constantly type their names into Google, keep an eye on the Google Places and organic rankings, and above all see what you can learn from them.
Creating video. Short videos that serve as little nuggets of helpful info, not little infomercials. They don’t need to be pretty, but they do need to be informative. Upload them to YouTube, then to your Google Places listing and your site.
Pursuing publicity. I’m talking about keeping your peepers open for chances to write a short article for your local paper, do an interview in which you’re the “expert,” participate in a local charity event—anything. Good publicity can win you links and/or citations, both of which can help your ranking big-time. This needs to be an ongoing habit.
Running tests. Test coupons. Test different ways to ask your customers for reviews. Try other 
Running SEO analyses. You need to keep your site ship-shape. 
Responding to reviews. You can log in to your Google Places listing and respond to reviews that customers have written through their Google accounts. Reply to the positive ones, too, not just the duds.
What factors would YOU add to the pie charts? How would you tweak the size of some of the “slices”? Leave a comment!
I apologize in advance if sports metaphors annoy you.
Are there even more track & field events worth clobbering your competition in? Yes: you’ve got the 800m run, the 5000m run…and many others. Likewise, there are even more elements of getting visible in Google Places.
"Once we worked with Phil on Google Places, we shot up to the top in no time....When we ask new patients how they heard about us, they say that our listing was the top search for ‘Fresno Dentist’..." 
