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Well, so I have another question then.

Is there any research on how many people click the local listings verses the organic ones (when they show up at the top of local searches)? This is a critical question for us because we are ranking #1 organically but #4 on the page due to local listings being up top.

Looking that the SEOMoz beginners guide to SEO, they claim the following stats:

30% of folks search high volume keywords while the other 70% search long tail. Of those the positions break down as follows:

1-18.2%
2-10.1%
3-7.2%
4-4.8%

Now having said that, take a look at the attached image. Lets say that in our market 10,000 searches are performed by customers actually needing service (I think that it is actually much more than this). For the 30% that equates to 3000 qualified customers that are searching the high volume keyword.

If our close rate is roughly 50%, the difference in revenue between the #1 position and #4 position is $80,400. Of course this entire senario assumes that the local listings count as #1, #2, #3. If not then all of these numbers are gibberish.

We were planning to open another branch at the end of the year in one of the metro cities. 80k is enough to make me want to add that branch now. The real question is does the local listings matter?

Does anyone know stats for clicks with the local listings displayed up top?

Thanks in advance.

D

PS> Miriam, enough of the shellacking. I get it! We are not and were not trying to intentionally abuse the system. In our industry, google positions are highly competitive and of course we want to rank well. Ranking makes the difference as a business owner for my employees and my family. I want to anything and everything that I can to be successful. I am not not however in the business of being dishonest. Nor do I want to be.

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So here is the problem that I am facing.

The physical location of our business is located in a suburb of a large metro area market (which consists of 3 different cities). Our company services all of the cities located in the metropolitan area market.

I have seen over the past year with Google+ and Google places that Google gives preference to businesses in local search based on their location (specifically to businesses that are located near the center of the city). My suspicions were confirmed by the following:

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

In the past we went out and played the game where we purchased UPS boxes in our service cities so that we can compete in Google local search local (recommendation from a SEO company that we were using at the time). I did not really want to do that, but at the time it seemed as though we had no other option with how Google was ranking businesses in those markets.

Now Google has caught on to this strategy and has killed those local listings.

It is frustrating that Google assumes that a listing should have higher rank based largely on physical location.

We never had the intent of violating Google policy, but what are we to do? Not trying to play victim but it is true.

My question is how can we rank extremely well in local search for the different cities of the metro area considering that we are physically located in a suburb? Has anyone else successfully overcame this obstacle? Any ideas on how we can rank well in Google+/Google Places in these cities?

Frustrated Business Owner.