What if, instead, local businesses began to think about their websites more like a listing in a phone directory. What if they began to build and optimize their websites with primary intent of being found in their hometown as leader in a category. Someone looking for "Farm Fresh Tuna in Upper Cutbank, Montana" is going to enter just such a search, right?

Google and Yahoo both announced this month their model for tapping into local search traffic. In other words they are now going to make it easier for web surfers that want to find an accountant in their home town to do so.

Everyone knew they would eventually get around to this very lucrative market so now more than ever you need to prepare your website to be found in your town. More about local search at these sites. http://www.google.com/lochp - Beta site http://www.google.com/help/faq_local.html#what FAQ http://local.yahoo.com/u_s__states - yahoo local

What I'm talking about today is "local" search engine optimization. In one sense principles are same as everyday regular search engine optimization but way of thinking about them is a bit different. ~~~~~~ gEEk Term definition: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is science of making sure web pages are "designed" in such a way that search engines can find, index, and rank them according to value of their content. For those of you who don't know, there is an entire industry built around this science. ~~~~~~

In old day mindset was to create a website and optimize it for anyone looking for a certain topic.

Local SEO focuses first on being found in your town....for a certain topic. Geo targeting is key. When someone is looking for a veterinarian, they don't search locally (at moment) for name of your firm. Think in terms of a Yellow Pages directory. They go to city they are looking for and then category and then name of firm to call.

These days, if you pay any attention to even a small portion about what goes on with web advertising, you're sure to hear about getting more links for your own web site.

I want to discuss a little something called internal links:

See, most sites that I visit are well on their way to getting a great (GPR) Google Page Ranking for their site. Whoops, wait a minute, I mean their main page! Only: www.yoursite.com/index

More times than none, many sites don't even provide a "site map" which simply indicates all pages for their site. It's even writen within guidelines from google! They even TELL YOU to provide a site map! If you've never read google guidelines, don't be foolish as to think you know what it says, go read them here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Pay special attention to what you should, and especially what shouldn't do!

On another note: The whole point of this article is to explain to you that you can raise your internal rankings simply by changing your web site structure.

It seems that in order to get a page to PR4/10, you need to have that page on 4-6 pages with 4/10 or better.