I dunno. One of the best SEO people I know runs a Thai restaurant and on a good day controls the whole first page when searching for Thai restaurants in his town.
That would be the exception that proves the rule then. If he's able to SEO the whole first page for Thai restaurants, that would seem to say the rest of them are terrible at the web.
His main tactic is that he grabs all the "internet real estate" that he can, that is he has a landing page for his restaurant in absolutely every place a restaurant could have a landing page.
