Free to the business owner, basic business profiles replace the function of Web page content in traditional SEO. Profiles provide optimizers with a structured business information template to boost a local business rank within the local search engines User reviews, published opinions about a business, are another form of user-generated content used by local search engines. In theory, these reviews are derived from actual customers. In practice, reviews can come from a business owner, a competitor, or a local search engine optimizer.

Other, simpler tactics just involve some legwork. For those with webpages, add a physical address to every webpage. A footer with your physical address (Google seems to prefer all on one line) can make a huge difference.

User-generated content also takes the form of ratings. Business ratings generally appear as a numerical star ranking. Most important is the fact many local search engines enable a user to sort business listing results on the basis of ratings. It's simple and painless to give a business a rating as an owner, a customer, or even a competitor.

When was the last time you rated your business, or your client's business, across the new local search utilities?
What's your star value?
In local search, user-generated content is king. It creates a unique opportunity for those with the foresight to formulate local SEO strategies.
Yet, user-generated content will soon create a disquieting quality-control problem for local search engines, much as spam and over-optimization affected traditional search engines.

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