If you do SEO or copywriting work for local businesses, how have you found your success with targetting local Keyword Phrases, for example "landscape gardeners in beverly hills" etc?

I have recently taken on a couple of clients and had success targetting local keywords like this, I found them to be low competition and easy to get 1st page rankings, but the traffic is minimal and leaving me eager to find more sources of local traffic other than using PPC.

Any suggestions or thoughts on this folks?

You need to find an seo to outsource to that can get the really tough keywords into the top of google.
I know someone who has been doing this for 4 years. I have him partnered up with me soon on a 100 website project. If you want i can give you his contact email and portfolioand you guys can talk. Trust me when i say tough keywords i mean super tough keywords . Some that are searched 30,000 times a month or more. Just shoot me a pm.

thanks for the offer but thats fine, I work with someone too who helps with that sort of thing,

You see, I already thought of going for the super tough keywords, but doing that for clients, thats a "shoot yourself in the foot" scenario, sorry, let me briefly explain my reasoning before you think I'm mad,

Lets say I want to target Landscape gardening again, now I can only give one client that top spot, if I can even get it, for the broadly search terms of either "Landscape Gardening" or even "Gardening", however whoever gets that is going to need to be strategically prepared as a business to handle a Large percent of untargetted traffic, due to the clientle I am approaching, Small Local Businesses. So "Beverly Hills Landscape Gardening Specialists" would be getting traffic from all over the US and the world, not just potential clients from beverly hills, so now I need to do a whole lot more work with that client, prep them for monetizing a whole different market, perhaps even brief them on a national expansion program,

WOW, thats not what I pitched them on, no, mom and pop biz no 1 wants local traffic, and local keywords rankings so they can get local jobs and carry on doing what they are doing just a little more and perhaps start expanding at their own pace.

Also, this means I don't limit myself to 1 "landscape gardening" business, or local "mom and pop business no 1" but instead can take on a multitude of similar type businesses from different locations, and replicate the process for their particular location.

Hence I need to find various sources of Localized traffic.

So local SEO only works so well, like I said, I know there are a number of different ways to gather local traffic, here are some ideas My team of associates and I have recently been trying for Localized traffic, and then if anyone else has any of their own ideas please do share,

Craigslist - Obvious contender, post relevant service ads under relevant local cities, not much chance of getting flagged for spam when you do genuine ads, just don't overdo it etc

Gumtree - Just like craiglist, mainly UK traffic

Ebay - not only do they have classified ads of there own, but depending on what kind of business you or your client run, placing auctions advertising your services can work well, I have even known of someone to do very well doing Fencing jobs advertising on ebay in and around his city

Business Directories (Local/national) - There are many local business directories that if you search for localized keywords then these business type directories tend to dominate the top search, they are easy to knock off but it is also very wise to be listed on those directories, as they have good traffic themselves some of them. Sites like yell.com etc are also good business directories

Anymore ideas for local traffic?