• Convert Offline , Friday, May 30, 2008 3:46 PM

There are a number of similarities between the best practices for local SEO and yellow page ads. For example, small businesses have long been told to include as much info as possible in each yellow pages ad they place--because if consumers don't see it in the ad, they don't think you do it. The same goes for on-page SEO and the engines' crawlers, according to Tim, the Local Search Hound.

"If you don't mention the service on your site, Google assumes that you don't do it," Tim says. "And you will have little chance of ranking for that term (unless of course you get a bunch of other folks to say it in anchor text, but that is a story for another day)."

Local business owners should also clearly define their service area. Pizzerias that include a list of communities they delivered to typically saw better responses to their yellow page ads, and the tactic applies to search too.

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