Local SEO: By city, by multiple cities, or by region?

[KevinBloom]

My client is a kitchen remodeling company in Sterling, Virginia and is trying to rank well in local results.  I am struggling with keyword selection mostly because I am still learning about local SEO.

The city the company is located is Sterling, however their business comes from several other close by cities like Reston, Herndon, and Fairfax (Nobody lives in Sterling so they don't care too much about owning that in search engines).

Is the right strategy:

1. Choosing one city and focusing on that (kitchen remodeling in reston, VA)

2. Optimizing for multiple cities (kitchen remodeling, reston, herndon, fairfax...)

3. Optimizing for an entire region (kitchen remodeling, northern virginia)

I know it's hard to answer this with little information but gut reactions would be appreciated.

I am a new SEOmoz member so excuse me if this question is too specific for this forum.  I'm still getting a feel for the community.

Thanks!

Sean

[pablogalante]

For Local SEO use Google Places/Maps - you should target the local cities individually and then optimize the Google map listing from there

you can also cover the county and norther part of state - this will work in MSN/Bing as well

Also combine Yelp and other local search engines as alot of local traffic is going through yelp

[BlinkWeb]

If it isn't competitive, you may still display in a larger geo. You may consider multiple listings in areas which are so far away that you arent displaying in. This suggestion will probably get a lot of flack as it can be considered to be map spam.

I have done this in very limited situations. It involves getting an address in a new locality to verify your listing. I think google has gotten better and combatting this although I have had a client do it with very good success. They still get a lot of call on these listing.

Do not go overboard (a few extras at most)! also don't list anywhere if you really cant compete there. It's an option but a controversial one.

[AaronSchinke]

In Google places as well as on Adwords you can select your geographic area. As far as keywords go you can target multiple cities with keywords on the site (option 2) and through the anchor text on links. I have seen this work just fine on several auto websites - something I know a bit about.

[KevinBloom]

Thanks Aaron.  The client listed about 16 cities that they do business in.  Do you think limiting that list to about 5 cities is a good idea?

thanks