One of the best in the local SEO game by the name of David Mihm (along with many other geniuses) put together a list of the most important and most negative factors when trying to rank locally. You can find the entire report here
I am going to outline some of the things that I think are intersting that I think a lot of businesses either miss or disregard.
1) Your address needs to actually be in the city where you are trying to get results. This is a problem for some folks as they might be in a small suburb of a bigger city and therefore do not show up when someone in that bigger city searches for your services. There is always a work around though! While some consider this method slightly shady I do not have a problem with it as long as it’s used within reason.
Go to a mailbox store or a UPS store in the city where you are trying to get rankings and rent a box with them for a year. Probably will cost you about $100. Use that address to submit to the search engines. You also want to use that address on your website though as they really need to match if you hope to get good rankings. I dont see this as a bad or shady option if you actually service the area in the bigger city. This could be abused though and I do strongly discourage people from doing that. For example, I can work for any customer no matter what their local. I am not going to go register addresses in different cities around the US because I could technically work for them. Keep this within reason.
2) Your Product / Service Keyword should be in your LBL title! This seems like a dumb thing to say but your main keyword should be in your title. I myself have even been guilty of leaving this out on occasion because the business name didn’t include their main keyword. You can usually find a way to work it in without it becoming too spammy though. Once again, dong go overboard with this and try to stuff in every keyword you want to rank for into your title. It wont take the search engines long to catch this and give you the slap!
3) PO Boxes and 800 Numbers! Search engines actually use your address (go figure) so put a physical address so they know where you’re located. If you must have your PO Box on your site also include your physical address in the footer of every page and only put your PO Box on the contact us page. It would also be wise to use paint or some other program to make an image file that has your PO box so the search engines dont even read it.
The same train of thought should be applied to your 800 number. Yes they’re handy and a good tool to have but they do you no good in the SEO world!
So there are my thoughts on a couple points. I see people make those mistakes or overlook those things regularly. I do strongly suggest you read through the entire report he put together if you’re interested in doing your own SEO. Also check out my business boosting blueprint which will also walk you through step by step how to get results with your site!