Great Primer on Local Search and Small Businesses

5. Consider mail forwarding for a home business

Home-based businesses have a special problem. They want to be found, yet for security reasons prefer not to publicize their home addresses on the Web. A mail forwarding service that provides a physical address for mail may be worth it. Even a post office box address is helpful. For fax and phone, consider a phone forwarding and fax forwarding service (I use GotVMail) so that the numbers cannot be cross-referenced to your home.

6. If you can't get a link, at least get a mention

Standard search engine optimization advice beats us silly with the idea that we must get links to our websites. "But for purposes of local search, mentions even without hyperlinks can have value," says Slawski. If you can get your business mentioned where the mention also includes your address or phone number, the search engines may extract the information and use it to validate that the business is in fact associated with that location. So, for example, getting mentioned in the local chamber of commerce website or in your local online newspaper, can be helpful for local search purposes. The more mentions, and the more specific the mentions, the better.