In the last couple of weeks, I’ve received a few different inquiries regarding Google and local search. One was how to show up in Google Maps results, one was how to show up in the natural results for local searches, and one was how to appear above the fold for localized Google AdWords campaigns.
Why not achieve all three of them, plus some “piggy back” SEO?
The last SES conference I’ve been to was in San Jose close to two years ago, but Atlanta-based Stacy Williams from Prominent Placement gave a great example on how a local company can dominate results. To this day, it holds true.
There’s some dominance!
To many search marketers, this isn’t anything new. To local business owners, this may be. Google separates their natural, local, and paid listings. There’s no reason a local business can’t do the same.
Regarding “piggy back” SEO, this comes down to both local (Maps) and natural listings. By having profiles in places like SuperPages.com and CitySearch.com can only help. Google Local helps legitimize your profile and Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) results often appear toward the top in the natural results.
LocalMN Blog 
I’ve also been reading – and believe it, so have preached it to some of our mutual acquaintances – that claiming one’s local listings helps ‘validate’ your domain in the eyes of Google and Yahoo. So it’s a trust factor for organic success, just as decent content and phat linking are trust factors, and screw that whole sandbox concept as an artifact of 2006.
I tend to believe it because it shows legitimacy of domain and ownership (spammers don’t list street addresses, after all), and also shows some placement in the world. Most pure-play sites, let alone spammers, aren’t ever going to have had a Yellow Page listing, or shown up in Martindale-Hubbell, etc. While, sure, Maps and search results are two databases, blended search is all about culling from many sources and using relevancy algorithms to pick what stuff from what dbs show up.
I have heard that too Joolie, although I can’t remember the source. It does make since though and hopefully make the natural results more relevant.
Congrats on the copy by the way! I heard the news when running into Liz at the last MIMA event.