The problem is you’re going to have to do a lot of work to do so. There’s no easy way out and it’s going to take time and resources to do so and maintain your position.
Basically, local SEO means you’re targeting a specific place to market your goods and services. That takes some doing but the fundamentals are the same with any kind of website to get it to the top of the search engine rankings. There’s no fast trick or computer solution here. It takes hands on ability and following the advice of experts. The search engines and directories are getting wise to people using automated systems and programs to get the upperhand. To prevent this, the search engines are tweaking their algorithm programs to detect such efforts and this is becoming quite a headache to webmasters and companies trying to get ahead.
The first step to dominating local SEO is basic. Put together a website that is unique, well written, well designed with all the pertinent information that you need to have displayed. Your location as well as your NAP (Name Address Phone) are paramount for display or at least linked to from the main page to a page where it can be easily found and indexed by the search engines. Once your main site is done, it’s time for strategy and there is a lot of it. Nevermind those old school tricks of links and so on. Google is wise to that trick. The days of the big linking thing are waning and the age of relevant links from local landing pages and citations has begun.
If you’re going national with your campaign, you’ll need to create local landing pages for each city, town, location you’re looking to exploit. This means not putting together cookie cutter landing pages where just the name of the city or town or village is. Far too many have tried this and failed miserably but some people still just don’t get it that originality is the key to successful SEO in general. So if you’re going for the gold in more than one location then you’re going to have to create a landing page specific to that location. Example, if you’re trying to attract business from Orlando, FL, then you’ll need a page specific to Orlando and populate that page with some facts, pics with tags pertaining to that city and how your company should be associated with it. If you then want to dominate Tampa, FL, you’ll have to do the same. You might try the same layout but your copy and photos should be original and unique or you risk being ignored or bounced by the search engines.
Citations
You’re going to have to master using citations. Don’t even try to debate this valuable approach or you’re going to lose. Citations allow for data regarding your website, services and goods to be indexed by search engines and directories. The search engines and directories love citations because they know that the data isn’t cookie cutter and they prevent such bulk submission except for the top sites like Google, Bing Local, and Foursquare. The citations are valuable because again, they list data regarding your site even if there’s no direct link to your website. This is why you must put your NAP prominently so that when people refer to your site they include that data and not miss it. This is the lynch-pin to success using citations. People write about you, and the world finds out about you. This is a great way to get those local results.