Almost every local business that I Google has usually done quite a poor job optimizing their site for search engine visibility. I would not find some of these businesses on the first page at all if it were not for the several local search directories that have a rudimentary entry for them.
Their first sin is [...]

Your pizza is a hometown legend. You have about a dozen restaurants locally and you want to solidify your leadership in the market, further extend your brand and leverage your operation with a view of possibly expanding throughout a tri-state region. What should your website involve to achieve this?
Building a Site That Achieves Results
XML/RSS
A website [...]

Search engine visibility for your site is greatly improved for local search results by optimizing your images, especially given Google’s and Yahoo’s implementation of universal search.

Beyond aesthetics, images cause a viewer to linger, particularly if your product has a community of “passionate users” (a label applied to those consumers whose enthusiasm often culminates in vibrant [...]