You know what they say: Location Location Location. It's important on the web too.

People got tired of searching for Pizza Delivery and getting results from the other side of the world. Imagine ringing Tokyo from Auckland and asking 'Do you deliver?'

So, more and more people started to enter location information to refine the search results.  And Google includes location signals when it works out what to show people.

Location is particularly relevant if your business is geographically dependant, eg lawnmowing, dentists, childcare centres, restaurants etc.  If you don't narrow your focus there is going to be a lot of other similar business across the globe you'll be competing with.

Recommendations:

• Include your location details on your site. Preferably not just on the contacts page where you'll only get one instance of your location. You could include it in your footer to increase the number of instances the location words are used.
• Although I wouldn't recommend it unless it is relevant, try a page for each different location if you have more than one.  Eg one for your Auckland shop, one for Christchurch etc.  I've seen people add a page for each suburb they target, which is quite a nice tactic (at least from a search engine perspective) but if identical content is repeated across each page then you'll probably run into duplicate content issues (and it looks contrived from a user perspective).
• Treat location as one of your keywords so you appear ahead of that Christchurch promotional company if you are in Auckland (if the searcher has entered Auckland). You probably want to keep it to the general area (eg Auckland rather than Browns Bay), unless you really do only want to attract local residents. This might be OK if you are a vet clinic for example.
• Include your location in your directory listing information and descriptions.
• Get a local business listing in Google (Google Places). It's easy and free. You'll need to sign up for Google but that's no hardship.
• Consider your business name - eg Auckland Barbecue Warehouse. If you are able to choose which location, use the one earliest in the alphabet, ie Birkenhead Optics rather than Verrans Corner Optics. This is an old directory trick, hence the reason for so many businesses named "AAA Barbecues".
• Include your location in content - eg Testimonials, blog posts (erm, like this one although it wasn't intentional!). For example, "Tony's Tire Service in Henderson got me four new tires for the price of two!"

Google Places - it used to be so simple

Up until recently, a post about local SEO wouldn't be complete without a recommendation to add a Google Places page because it was quick and easy.  But then Google went and merged Google Places into Google+ Local.  And it got a lot more complicated.  Verification issues, duplicate accounts are some of the issues. 

If you want to go ahead and do this, here is a step by step guide and a FAQ posted on the forum

Footnote:

There is a lot of buzz lately around something called 'location wars'. This sometimes refers to competition between Foursquare and Gowalla which are mobile social applications, or it can mean the general rush to grab a piece of the location based services action. These use the GPS capabilities of smart phones to help you shop or socialise (for example).

In NZ these don't seem to be as popular - it migh be because they didn't live up to the hype, the number of users didn't reach a critical mass, or our mobile data prices are still too prohibitive.