You have got to read this blog article from Blumenthals.com titled ‘10 Likely Ranking Factors of Google’s Local Search Algorighm’. This article will help you to better understand some of the possible opportunities some of your websites may have with SEO if you are targeting a local market in any way. Here is a quick list of those 10 factors. You need to read the actual post by clicking the link above to read the real thing and to get more details. Here are the 10 factors in summary:

  1. Address Located within City of Search
  2. Confirmed listing by virtue of entry in Local Business Center or trusted Google partner
  3. Categories of business relates to search phrase
  4. Business Name relates to search phrase
  5. Confirmation of address by authoritative website and referring websites
  6. Link phrase relevance
  7. Score of Authoritative Website
  8. Number of Reviews
  9. Number of Web References
  10. Quality of Web References

Great information from this blog article. Thanks a ton Mike Blumenthal for putting together this great stuff!!!