I remember back in the day when clients used to ask me how to get their business in the top of the search engines. Now they’re all asking “how do I get in the top of Google’s local listings?” Well Matt McGee at Small Business SEM outlines what he believes are things to consider if you want to see your business climb to the top of the local results, in his post ” 10 Likely Elements of Google’s Local Search Algorithm“.

 Speaking of the recent expansion of the Google Maps Onebox, Matt says “local search optimization is much more important than it was before this new display was implemented widely on Google.com”. Bill Slawski weighs in with some refinements and reference to his post on this topic, Local Sensitivity in Google Local Search.

The bottom line is there are several factors you need to consider when optimizing for local search and Matt does a great job of covering them.