Your town's location is irrelevant as long as it is on the same server. Once started you can petition an existing guild to be invited, or form your own guild. Proximity isn't a factor.
Alliances aren't a formal part of the game (yet), though some guilds do have loose alliances with other guilds though the friendship bar.
Each guild has a profile page accessible through the rankings pages. Unfortunately there's no master index of this that I'm aware of.