There is an interesting review on Search Engine Land about a recent Yahoo study on consumer behavior in choosing local services and providers. The Yahoo study covered 5 vertical categories: legal, real estate, home improvement, health care and vocational education.

One of the interesteing treands that is very noticeable from this study is how important the Internet is becoming for find local businesses and services.

• Vocational Education – 67 percent of respondents used a major search engine compared to 41 percent who used local search
• Healthcare – 53 percent used insurance provider directories while 44 percent relied on a search engine
• Real Estate – 51 percent used a real estate vertical search engine versus 44 percent who used a major search engine
• Legal – 36 percent of respondents referred to a search engine while 25 percent used the internet yellow pages
• Home Contracting – 36 percent used a search engine while 26 percent used the internet yellow pages

 You can read the complete article on Search Engine Land - CLICK HERE for the complete review of the Yahoo Consumer Study.

What does this for local businesses?

The basic message for local businesses and service providers is to make sure you have a professional website and make sure that it’s properly optimized for the search engines and can be found by consumers using the search engines to find their local businesses and service providers.

On Google's Webmaster Central Blog they just posted Google's Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide (PDF file). After reviewing it, it is definitely an excellent guide for those clueless about website optimization. A lot of what they include in their guide is good, practical advice. The guide is meant for beginners and can really help separate fact from fiction when talking with others about SEO. One thing to remember is you still have to write for your audience and not just the search engines.

A snippet for Google's SEO Starter Guide description:

"Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current."

Google's SEO Starter Guide on Google Webmaster Central Blog.