Like it or not, Google ranks content in the search engines based on the number of inbound links to a website. Because of this, ranking high in the search engines (Google in particular) is a popularity contest. [Insert Flashbacks of Highschool Here]. Makes sense, if something is more liked by more people, it should be ranked higher. The drawback is, that this encourages Search Engine Spam (spam bots, paid links, fake blog posts, etc).
For small and medium sized businesses this makes ranking high in the search engines rather difficult. Because your competing with the entire world for keywords for a local market. Which could be a good thing, if you can rank high in the global market, offering products and services that are easily exported, you can increase your revenues exponentially.
But what if you only want to stay local. How can you optimize your web site for Google Local Search? It’s all about the keywords, and the link context.
