When you type in a search term you get what's know as a SERP or Search Engine Results Page. There are 3 main areas for this page.

Items 1 and 2 in the diagram are Paid Search or PPC listings.

• Using Google's AdWords tool the advertiser has bid on specific search words and terms and when a user types in those terms their ad shows up.
• When a use clicks, the advertiser pays for that click - this is known as Pay-per-Click. The advertiser sets a daily or monthly budget for clicks, once the budget is reached the ad does not display.
  
• Advertisers can specify the ad to only show up for users in specific locations based on local keyword usage and the users IP address.
• The ranking of the paid ads is based on a number of factors such as click rate and Google's determination of the relevancy of the ad content and the page it connects to. In short better performing more relevant ads get better listings. This can be a challenge for a new advertiser who is trying to get clicks to improve rank but needs rank to improve clicks.
  

Item 3 is the Google Local Business Center Listing or Google 10 Pack

• This is based on signing up our company and maintaining a verified listing (this is part of the Pronto service) where you get and respond to a post card for location verification.
  
• The quality of your listing, updates, pictures, review and other elements are key.
• Also very key are citations of your company which are references, not necessarily links, of your company with address information. In other words vouching that you are in fact a local business
• And as always Page Relevancy (content) and Page Rank (inbound links) of your pages are factors.
  

Item 4 is the Organic Search Results

•  Key factors in ranking as always are the Page Relevancy (content) and Page Rank (inbound links) of your pages.
• Time, amount of content, frequency of up dates and many, many other factors come in to play such as title tags and other page elements.
  
• It's also important to remember that this is dynamic and a result is always relative to anther listing. There is no "set and forget" SEO strategy.