How can I show local universities that I am someone they will want to hire in a few years?
My students (at a large well-ranked R1) are having trouble finding a job anywhere in the world, given the current problems with the academic job market: too many PhDs at a time when universities are reducing the number of t-t faculty. 

By limiting your search to one particular geographic area, you greatly handicap your ability to find a job. You must understand that in some departments, they will not have a job in your particular niche come up but once in 20 years when someone retires or leaves. Even given that you are looking at half a dozen schools, the odds that a job in your area will come up next year is -- there are some mathematicians here that can give you the odds.

That being said, the best you can hope for is to do what you are doing:


Research: Keep publishing as much as you can. Publish or perish.
Service: If there is a local/state/regional/national association of scholars in your discipline, join it and become very active. Show that you are the type of person willing to put in grunt service time and will create community. Organize a symposium that brings people in the area together.
Teaching: Come up with innovative courses that put you on the radar.


But you must also accept the very real possibility that your geographical limitation may very lead to no jobs or only adjunct positions in the coming years until the statistical anomaly of a job-in-your-research-area-in-your-geographical-area comes up.