trying to solve the offline local biz marketing puzzle

Hi,

I have a couple of colleagues with local service businesses (acupuncture & a mechanic) and I want to help them rank in the search engines quickly for the local search terms such as 'acupuncture + locality'. ( I am hoing to do more of this on a paid basis in future but this is a favour to get me started).

I know the theory of buying some domain names with the geo-specifc search term ('mechanic + locality') and then getting links back to that domain/site but...

a) what is best/quickest way of getting links back to the site?
b) How do I use this technique to get their current site ranked higher in search engines? i.e. I can see how this will get the new site on the local domain ranked very quickly but how do I then apply this to their current site and get that ranked quickly?

c) does anyone know of a really good course in offline consultancy? I specifically want to be able to give local services more leads and help them move up in the search nengines very quickly for their local search terms such as 'plumber in newhaven'

Thanks for the help :-)