People are increasingly using search engines to look for services and products within their local reach: restaurants, doctors, lawyers, professional services, etc. As a result, the major search engines are beginning to deliver more and more localized search results into their organic listings. The search engines have created a new index that deals exclusively with businesses who want to list their services/products to their local geographical audience, which is where local search engine marketing is needed.
For example, Google has a new index that deals with "local" listings. If somebody searches for a "skin doctor in san diego" on Google, we're now seeing the traditional web search engine results being pushed down by the "local" search results listed in Google's local directory index. These new local listings are not actually directly representing web site listings but rather listings created for the respective businesses themselves on Google's local web site (a.k.a. Google Maps) such that they show up when people search Google maps. Yahoo also has a similar "local" feature on their search results. The need for local business SEO has never been so concrete, especially considering the increased use of the mobile web.

Local search results appearing before traditional web results.
Local results showing up before web results shows us that there is an opportunity to give more attention to local business listings and has become an essential part of search engine marketing. Best Rank can help place and optimize your business listings on the local search engine listing results with local search engine optimization, as well as optimizing for the traditional web listings. With Google's recent changes, including the Caffeine search index and semantic search, utilizing local SEO marketing is more important than ever.
There is no denying that local SEO services are gaining steam with all of the major search engines. You can contact Best Rank today to learn more about our local search engine marketing and optimization services.