high rankings on Google are best achieved through having the most optimized webpage for your chosen keywords.
I cannot stress enough, how beneficial it is to have your keywords in your domain name. And if you have a 3 words keyword phrase you are focusing on, be sure to optimize for the three words individually. Long tail exact matches are best, because the more relevant and detailed the search the higher the conversion rate will be. If you walk dogs for a living, the keyword dog isn’t going to help you that much nor is dog walking, unless you are more specific, like, dog walking in richmond virginia. If you walk dogs and only walk dogs in a certain town, it sure wont help you achieve your goals of expanding your business by attracting people who couldnt possibly be clients of yours, mostly because your dog walking business is likely to be a local business.
If you do business locally, you really need to taregt that area locally. And this can be done on the internet. Google Place pages are an invaluable resource. Google Ad Words also allows you to target only certain zip codes, which could make PPC advertising very cost effective.