Post Penguin SEO for Small Businesses?

[Hero]

I'm trying to rack my head around how a small local business like say a hairdresser or dentist will have SEO in the post Penguin environment. I mean, how relevant will content marketing going to be for your local dentist? I keep on hearing that after Penguin you have to have killer content that everyone what's to share with everyone else to rank in SERPs. But I mean, what's "killer content" for a local dentist and who goes around sharing their local dentist's content anyway? How much social media engagement for a local dentist should you actually expect? Let's say I'm going to get a root-canal, the last thing I can imagine myself doing is going on the dentists blog and liking or sharing their content.

It just doesn't seem realistic for small local businesses or am I missing something?

[J]

in the example you give of a local business, do not overly concern yourself with SEO except to have your site properly setup with the usual things.

You would benefit more greatly by concentrating on building branded presences on local directories, and possibly doing some free classified ads- both online and hard copy. Above all else ask clients to rate them on their service!

FEEDBACK from clients is king: eg: my wife was purposely injured by a female racist Gynecologist, and then forced to pay for follow up office visits that did no good. I insisted that she find someone else. We looked online, found a Gynecologist with terrific client feedback, almost like it was fake. However visits to him proved his competency, care, and diagnostic skills. His repiutation is NOT FAKE!

[David Justin]

Janet has an ecellent answer. Unfortunately, too long for me to read. One word: G+/ G maps. (Was that 2 words?) Get your G profile in order, and a youtube account.

[Sarah D]

One way to get into the Google 7 Pack on the first page of Google is to have a good number of local listings in places like Yelp, MerchantCircle, etc. You can get a report on the places your competitors are listed so you can create listings in the same places here: http://fiverr.com/xoziggieox/give-you-a-...-are-using