Here are the top 7 things you can do to help your local and/or regional business thrive:

Add Locations to Web Page Titles

Make it obvious to search engines and search engine users where you are. Use geo-qualifying search terms with your main search term phrase (i.e. “tire stores” vs. “Springfield tire stores”). Make sure these location references are in the META title section on each of your web pages. This also allows your location to be prominently displayed on the search engine results page, something that does wonders for local businesses in driving traffic to their website. You have a good chance of earning a searcher’s click to your website if you provide what they are looking for near their location.

Claim Your Free Local Listings

Secure your local listings in Google Maps, Yahoo Local and MSN Live Local. This helps you in many ways:

• You’ll get a boost in confidence from the search engines, which may increase your natural search engine rankings

• Your customers will have more ways to find you

• You’ll stop competitors from hacking or hijacking your information

Improve Your Local Listings

Include anything you can that will help shoppers choose you over your competitors. Especially important are business hours and locations, brands and products you carry, areas you service, credit cards you take, your guarantees and special offers. Use photos and videos if you can as graphics often draw more searchers.

Display Location and Hours on Each Page of Your Website

Make it easy for online traffic to find and shop from your offline store. Prominently display customer service options. A unique way to distinguish your business in the internet era is to prominently display your telephone number in case a website visitor would like to speak with a human being.

Get Local Inbound Links to Your Website

Inbound links from relevant local and regional sites help Google validate your location. You should strive for links from local chambers of commerce, local charities, local government sites and relevant local business. Couple those links with inbound links from general authority (news sites, Yahoo, DMOZ) and industry related authorities (trade organizations, industry related sites, niche publications, blogs, etc.) and you’ll be well on your way to page one rankings.

Buy Domain Names That Use Geo-Qualifying Search Terms

There are a few marketing approaches you can take with this recommendation. The most important one is to buy domain names that contain geographical search terms people will use to find your product or service.

Domain names are viewed by search engines kind of like business names. Using geo-qualifying references within the domain name make it easier for search engines to know your location, and thus rank you more highly for geographic related search queries.

As an example, you want to own terms like http://www.springfieldaftermarketparts.com/ or www.Springfieldcarparts.com. These tell search engines where you are plus they mirror the search terms used by your customers and prospects. You can own as many of these geo-related domain names as you would like and re-direct them all to your main website or create micro-sites for even more impact.

Monitor Your Reputation Online

People want to share information in the internet era and reviews are a way in which they do so. By posting reviews online, people can now share their opinions with anyone who may be interested in reading their opinions. Reviews posted on practically any website can be incorporated in postings appearing on other sites and may impact search engine results.

Because of this, it’s critical to monitor what’s being said about your business on the web. This allows you to quickly become aware of trends and problems and allows you to take actions to address them. Google offers a free service that does a good job of doing this for you. Use Google Alerts for your name, names of key executives and key employees, and common variations of them. Once you have set up an alert, anytime Google crawls the web and finds mention of these terms, they’ll send you an email (or an RSS feed) that lets you know what was found. It’s quick, simple and easy. You’ll find Google Alerts to be an invaluable resource.