Great, comprehensive post. My landscaping company has been listed on google local for about a year and it always cracks me up when I get visitors from halfway across the country looking for landscaping services. Blogging has worked well in getting local terms to rank high. I started a blog last fall to test out local terms and within a month I was ranking in the top 10 for my county + landscaping or gardening. The domain I chose matched perfectly and I only had to write a couple of posts.

I'm definitely going to be writing up your post on my blog at http://52pageproject.com

Yaacov